Anything She Does
by LucretiaDecoy
Summary: Hiei temporarily visits an alternate reality and realises what has been missing in his life. He tries to return to the alternate reality but soon realises that the odds are stacked against him. Contains language, sex, violence and jerkface Hiei. (Repost of 2009 fic.)
1. Tragic and Stoic

**A/N:** I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho or any of the characters herein, they are all the property of Yoshihiro Togashi.

 **Rating for bad language (lots of it), violence (lots of minor violence, some major), sex (mostly minor) and jerkface Hiei – because he's really that bad in this fic.**

 **This is a very long, very complex fic (one of my top three longest and my second most complex). Inspired by the movies "The Butterfly Effect" and "Bedazzled", and intended to be an inverse of the "It's a Wonderful Plot" trope.**

 **Above all else: THIS IS A HIEI AND BOTAN ROMANCE.**

 **Set after the end of the anime.**

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Tragic and Stoic**

Spirit world, and everything in it, was completely detestable. There was not one single redeeming feature about anything in or from spirit world. The place was completely pointless. Demon world had been a much better place since spirit world had backed off and removed their barriers and soldiers, and even the living world functioned better without the interference of spirit world. Hiei had always felt that way, and no amount of running errands for Koenma or helping Yusuke with missions as spirit detective had ever come close to changing his mind. In fact, it was only because he respected Yusuke and made agreements of honour with him that Hiei ever bothered getting involved in any of spirit world's business. It was like the unfortunate and highly expensive toll he had to pay for Yusuke's alliance – or "friendship" as the Mazoku liked to call it.

The fact that Enki had died less than a year after being crowned ruler of demon world was nothing to do with spirit world. In fact, the dispute over leadership that had followed had already been settled, so why spirit world was getting involved was beyond Hiei's comprehension. Enki's wife had been offered the title but refused and instead insisted that Yusuke take it, as Raizen's heir. Yusuke had agreed to take over ownership of the part of demon world once owned by Raizen but no more, at which point Yomi and Mukuro had stepped forwards and taken over their own former fiefdoms. Mukuro had continued to run the border patrol, Yomi had kept his overly ambitious ways in check and Yusuke was doing just fine looking after his share of demon world. It had been that way for several months and nothing had gone wrong.

A belated complaint about the division of demon world from one of the finalists of the last demon world tournament was really no big concern. In Hiei's opinion, the three rulers – Mukuro, Yomi and Yusuke – should have just banded together and slaughtered the malcontent. He was powerful, but no serious threat as he had no support or followers. Yomi had refused to comment at first and Mukuro had insisted that the protester would soon tire of his campaign without support and she had decided to leave him be. But Yusuke had had the brilliant idea of mentioning the problem to Koenma, who had had the brilliant idea of sending the Spirit World Defence Force out in full force along the borders between demon world and spirit world – which was a truly awful plan – only he had decided to station his soldiers on the demon world side of the border, which had, of course, caused absolute chaos.

The gradual bonds of trust that had been building between the two worlds vanished within a matter of days, and somehow along the way Hiei had found himself teaming up with Yusuke, Kurama and Kuwabara and setting out to find the demon who had started the dispute and to either arrest him or kill him. After days of running from demons who saw him as a traitor and spirits who did not trust him, Hiei was hoping that he found the moaning bastard who had started the whole mess so that he could slaughter him slowly and painfully. He was forming a tasty plan that involved stringing up the demon's innards around the borders between demon world and spirit world as a reminder to both sides of what happened to anyone who dared cross Hiei Jaganshi: and the thought of it brought a smile to his face as he fled from the mountain village.

The team had split their efforts in an attempt to locate the demon they sought. Yusuke had taken some of Raizen's men with him on his search, Kurama had taken Kuwabara and Shura on his search and Hiei had gone alone. Or at least, he thought he was alone. Yusuke had become quite adamant that he should take at least one other person with him, but Hiei had always worked better on his own, so he had adamantly refused the help. He had raided the mountain village he had been assigned to check, wounded a few villagers to prove the severity of the situation and then taken off again. He was running because he knew the village he had checked had nothing to offer and he did not want to waste time there and he was running because they had summoned some sort of ancient rock monster that was drooling sulphuric acid and smashing craters into the ground in its bid to kill him: unfortunately the monster was of sufficient size and strength that only Hiei's Dragon of the Darkness Flame would be enough to stop it, and he did not like the idea of falling asleep outside of a village full of demons who wanted him dead for what he had just done to them, and so he ran on.

But Hiei knew that he was being followed by more than just the rock monster. Something had been following him since he had split away from Yusuke and the others. He suspected that Yusuke had purposefully sent one of his lackeys after him. Hiei had insisted that he would be fine on his own, but he had known by the look in Yusuke's eyes that he would probably not be allowed the privilege of working alone. And so apparently someone was trying to keep up with him now.

Hiei felt a strange desire to look back over his shoulder. As a narrow, hissing stream of yellow, bubbling acid appeared by his right foot and began eating its way down the hillside in pace with him he decided against wasting the effort looking back. There was a monster chasing him, and that was about all that he needed to know. He did also know that he would successfully make his escape. He was far too fast for the creature to ever catch him, and he could hear that he was gradually putting more distance between it and himself, and by the time he reached the base of the mountain, he knew that he would be safely away from it. The person following him, however, would probably not be so lucky. But anyone who was stupid enough to follow him after he had already refused help deserved to die at the hands of an acid producing rock beast, Hiei decided.

A sudden scream for help told him that his follower had been caught. He was slightly surprised when he heard the voice, because it was, quite clearly, a female voice, which he had not been expecting. He stopped long enough to turn around and look back to assess to situation: several hundred yards behind him, the giant rock beast was holding one hand in the air, a female figure dangling from its fingers. She was dressed in a silk kimono and had long, flowing blue hair, and, for a brief and awful moment, Hiei thought that it was his sister Yukina. In an instant all sorts of thoughts flashed through his mind, including the formulation of a list of names of people he would have to kill for putting Yukina into such a terrible situation. But Hiei's mind stopped short when the woman cried out again.

"Hiei! Help me, please!"

That was not Yukina's voice. And, as he watched, the woman lost her grip on the item she had been holding onto, and as it fell, he realised that it was an oar: she was one of spirit world's ferry girls. The rock beast roared at her, and she was sprayed with the acid of its saliva, which made short work of dissolving any part of her clothing or skin that it touched. She screamed out in pain and despair, and apparently she was mere seconds away from being consumed by the rock monster.

But she was a ferry girl, and frankly, Hiei did not give a fuck about ferry girls: so he turned around, glad that the monster was distracted from chasing him, and he ran on, barely caring when he heard her cry out her last words.

* * *

"I caught the bastard," Yusuke said. "He was a cowardly son of a bitch, he started trying to say he wanted to be my right-hand man."

"What did you do?" Kuwabara asked.

"Did you cut off his head and hang it from the gates of your tower as a reminder to anyone else stupid enough to question the laws of demon world?" Hiei asked.

Yusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama and Koenma all stopped short and stared blankly at him. Hiei had no idea what was wrong with them, but they all looked as though they were surprised by his question. Probably they were just annoyed that none of them had thought of the idea first, he decided.

"No," Yusuke eventually answered. "I did kill him though. He had caused a lot of damage and taken a lot of lives and he was a liability we could all do without."

"Well I'm just glad that this is all over," Koenma said.

"You know you didn't need to get involved in this," Yusuke reminded him.

"I was worried it might spill out into spirit world or the living world," Koenma replied. "And, honestly, I had my arm twisted into getting involved. A certain someone in my employ always worries about you boys when you're in trouble, and she insisted that we came here and did what we could to help out."

Yusuke snorted amusedly and rolled his eyes.

"Where is she, anyway?" Koenma asked him.

"I sent her after Hiei," Yusuke replied. "Hey, Hiei, where's Botan at?"

Hiei arched his eyebrows expectantly.

"What's a "botan"?" he asked.

"What's a…" Yusuke muttered. "Yeah, real funny, Hiei. We all know you hate Botan. But seriously, she was with you, what happened? Where is she now?"

Hiei shrugged indifferently.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"Sure you do!" Yusuke insisted. "Botan! The loud-mouthed idiot who's always nagging us!"

"Yusuke!" Koenma snapped. "That's my finest ferry girl you're talking about!"

"Ferry girl?" Hiei echoed.

"Yes," Koenma replied, turning to him with a smile that made him want to vomit. "She was so eager to help you boys, she always is. Yusuke sent her after you to make sure that you… To help you out in anyway that she could. I didn't see her come back with you though, where is she?"

Hiei took a sip from his bowl of tea deliberately, using the delay to try to figure out what was being asked of him.

"C'mon, Hiei!" Kuwabara moaned. "Where's Botan?"

"Hiei, she was right behind you," Yusuke added. "You did know she was with you, right?"

Hiei took another sip from his tea, though not because he needed the time to understand what was being asked, rather because he needed the time to formulate a diplomatic response. Apparently they were talking about blue-haired thing that the rock monster had killed, and apparently they were all quite fond of it, so he would need to choose his words carefully before answering their queries.

"It's dead," he said. "The villagers summoned an ancient rock beast to kill me and the ferry girl proved to be a useful distraction to it so that I could make my getaway."

"…What?" Koenma asked faintly.

"The ferry girl is dead," Hiei said again.

"But how?" Koenma asked.

Hiei shrugged.

"Maybe from the acid, maybe the monster ate it, maybe it got crushed to death, I don't know, I didn't stay around to find out," he replied.

Yusuke started to laugh nervously and loudly, patting Koenma on the shoulder.

"No, no!" he said. "Hiei's just joking! Botan's not really dead! Right, Hiei?"

Hiei quirked an eyebrow at him curiously.

"The rock monster caught it," he replied. "There's no chance it survived."

Koenma's jaw fell open and his pacifier dropped to the ground. He looked like he might cry.

"Is this a problem?" Hiei asked him. "You have thousands of ferry girls, don't you? I doubt you'll miss losing one. And besides, can't you just make another one to replace it?"

"Hiei, you dick!" Yusuke yelled suddenly. "That wasn't just some random ferry girl, that was Botan!"

"I don't understand," Hiei replied. "A ferry girl is a ferry girl. I didn't even know that they bothered naming them."

"You dirty rotten traitor!" Kuwabara yelled.

Kurama pushed Kuwabara back as he tried to lunge at Hiei, which merely brought a smirk of amusement to Hiei's face: that big orange-haired oaf seriously still thought that he could challenge him?

"Don't smile about it, you bastard," Kurama said to him suddenly. "You've done some terrible things in the time I've known you Hiei, and I've been able to turn a blind eye to them all, but this time you've gone too far."

"What?" Hiei echoed, throwing down his bowl of tea. "Are you trying to piss me off, fox?"

"Fuck you Hiei, you killed Botan!" Yusuke yelled.

"Fuck you too!" Hiei yelled back at him. "I didn't ask you to send it after me! It was too stupid and weak and it didn't belong here in demon world, I'm not to blame for what happened to it!"

"You let a monster kill Botan?" Koenma asked quietly. "My Botan? My sweet, precious, hard-working, loving, caring Botan, who came here to help you? You let her die?"

"Hn, I didn't realise it was so important to you," Hiei replied, folding his arms over his chest.

"You absolute horror of a living soul," Koenma said, his voice barely audible. "You better pray that you live a long life Hiei, because when you die, I'm going to see to it personally that you get sent to limbo where you suffer for what you did today."

Hiei turned his back on the melodramatic prince and walked off.

"Where the hell do you think you're going, Hiei?" Yusuke shouted after him.

"Home," Hiei replied without stopping or looking back.

"Good!" Yusuke said. "Fuck off back to Mukuro's territory, and don't ever bother coming anywhere near me again, you little asshole! Because if you do, I will fucking kill you!"

"Me too, you heartless dwarf!" Kuwabara added.

"I don't ever want to see you again either, Hiei," Kurama said.

Hiei slowed slightly, his eyes growing large. He did not stop or dare look back, but he was surprised to hear that even Kurama was disowning him for what was, frankly, something minor.

"I thought you had changed your old ways, but today you proved that you're rotten to the very core of your soul and truly beyond all redemption," Kurama added.

Had anyone else said those words Hiei might have laughed them off as overly-dramatic nonsense, but he knew that if it was Kurama saying them then clearly he meant them quite literally: and that thought made Hiei's feet stop.

"I don't think you should leave just yet, Hiei," Koenma called over to him. "I'm going to have you arrested for this. This isn't over, Hiei."

Hiei looked back over his shoulder. Yusuke and Kuwabara looked like they wanted to kill him and Koenma looked like he might pass out at any moment: but all three combined had nothing on Kurama, who looked disgusted and enraged, and the sight of those emotions on the normally stoic fox demon's face were so distracting, Hiei shortly found himself being dragged off to spirit world without the will to resist.

* * *

After sitting isolated in a prison cell in spirit world for several hours, Hiei was eventually summoned to Koenma's office. He was mostly pissed off at being made to go to spirit world and the way Yusuke and Kurama had spoken to him earlier, and he had been starting to think that they owed him an apology. He had, against his own better judgement, always done what they had asked of him, often running pointless errands on behalf of spirit world – and he so despised spirit world – and spending time around humans in the living world – and he absolutely detested humans and the living world – and now the people he had done all that for had turned on him in an instant over something completely insignificant.

"Hiei…" Koenma said with a sigh as Hiei stopped in front of his desk.

The prince was once more in his toddler form, though Hiei was unsure if it was an improvement or not.

"I've spent this entire time deliberating the matter," he continued. "Botan was in her human body when she died, and by luck her soul was brought back here to spirit world. We will be able to return her to her duties as a ferry girl, but she's understandably upset that you let her die, and she's reluctant to continue in her role as assistant to the spirit detective."

"Hn," Hiei snorted.

He distinctly saw Koenma square his little shoulders and ball his tiny fists.

"Does Botan's misery amuse you, Hiei?" he asked.

"You no longer have an active spirit detective," Hiei pointed out. "So why do you need an assistant?"

"Botan is a very valuable asset to the team," Koenma replied. "She has helped you all out on numerous occasions and I need her to continue to do that, but right now she's too scared to agree to working with you again. I want you to apologise to her, assure her this will never happen again, pledge your loyalty to her and agree to respect her as an ally."

Hiei's face dropped.

"Why don't you just castrate me, pull all my hair out and tell every demon in demon world that I've been working as your slave these last few years?" he said sarcastically. "It would be less painful and far less humiliating! I'm not apologising, I've done nothing wrong!"

"You let Botan die!" Koenma shouted, thumping one little fist pitifully against his desk. "She trusted you and you let her down!"

"Why are we still pretending that a ferry girl has feelings?" Hiei asked. "It's not even a real thing, it's just an illusion used by spirit world to coax lost souls into the afterlife!"

Koenma's face changed, and Hiei did not have to wonder why for long as he heard a stuttered sob behind him. He turned his head and saw a ferry girl walking over to stand beside Koenma at his desk.

"I-is that what you really think of me?" the ferry girl asked him. "You think I'm just an artificial homunculus, a thoughtless drone, a soulless being who just wanders around collecting souls?"

"Hn, that's exactly what you are!" Hiei shot back. "Am I supposed to care that this thing looks like it's crying?" he asked, turning to Koenma.

"She is crying, you heartless menace!" Koenma snapped, thumping his fist against his desk again.

Hiei turned his attention back to the ferry girl standing by Koenma. It had blue hair and probably was the same one the rock monster had killed, but he failed to see why he ought to care. It had tears blurring its pink eyes and a tissue clutched by in one hand that it kept pressing to its nose. There was something vaguely familiar about it, so maybe he had seen it with Yusuke before, but it was clearly stupid and weak, so what it use it was as Yusuke's assistant was beyond him.

"Can I go now?" he asked Koenma.

"You need to apologise to Botan, Hiei," Koenma flatly replied.

"I don't apologise," Hiei told him. "Ever. I never apologise because I never make mistakes and I have no regrets."

"Oh, so you deliberately let me die and you don't regret it?" the ferry girl asked him.

"Maybe I regret that your demise was not permanent," he spat back at it.

It gasped and tears began flowing from its eyes.

"Hiei, if you don't apologise to Botan, I have no other choice but to ban you from spirit world and the living world, and to let you know that if you ever visit either place, you will be killed instantly by an officer of the SDF," Koenma said.

"I hate spirit world and I hate the living world," Hiei replied. "Banning me from those places is not even a punishment as far as I am concerned."

"I thought you might say something like that," Koenma sighed. "Which is why I consulted with Yomi and Yusuke. They've both agreed that you are banned from their respective territories within demon world too. If you do not apologise to Botan, you will be forced to spend the rest of your existence within Mukuro's territory only, and you will never see any of your friends again – Yusuke and Kurama don't want to know you if you don't make amends with Botan."

Apparently Yusuke and Kurama had lost their minds, Hiei thought. Frankly it was insulting: what sort of idiots were they that they had chosen a ferry girl over him?

"I can't think of anything more disgraceful and painful for me than to stand here and pretend that I care about that thing beside you," Hiei said to Koenma. "I refuse to continue this charade. Send me back to Mukuro's territory and contain me there if you want. There's nothing and no-one outside of that place that I want to be involved with anyway."

"Fine then, so be it," Koenma replied. "I hope you meant it when you said you have no regrets Hiei, because there's no undoing this now."

"I don't care," Hiei said.

"I can't believe I was so wrong about you," the ferry girl said, tears falling freely down its face as it spoke. "Hiei, I… I always thought that you were so brave and strong and noble… I was scared of you, but I trusted you, and I even liked you! I simply can't believe you would just walk out on us all like this! Please reconsider! Is this really what you want? Really?"

Hiei stared at it blankly, wondering why it was still bothering to talk since he thought he had already made his feelings clear: he had no interest in it or anything it had to say.

"You feel no remorse at all?" it asked. "You can't even pretend to feel remorse for the sake of your friends, Yusuke and Kurama? Are you really that stubborn, that proud, that pig-headed?"

Hiei continued to stare at the ferry girl, silently hoping that it would stop talking and he would be allowed to leave soon.

"Hiei, if you walk out of here now without at least trying to redeem your actions today, my opinion of you will be forever cemented," it said. "I will never forgive you. I am a forgiving soul by nature and I don't hate, but I will hate you if you can't at least admit that you were wrong. At least admit that I did not deserve what happened to me. If you can't at least do that, then you truly are the most vile monstrosity ever to have graced any of the three worlds, and I will despise you until the end of time itself."

"I don't care what you think," Hiei told it. "If I was in the same situation again, I would not do anything differently. You got what you deserved today. Pointless, thoughtless things like you mean absolutely nothing to me."

"You heartless beast!" it cried. "What you did today was tragic and stoic, and that is how I will always remember you, no matter what!"

"I don't care what you think," Hiei said again.

"Enough," Koenma said firmly. "Get out of here, Hiei. Go back to Mukuro's territory, and don't ever leave there."

"Fine by me," Hiei said.

As he left Koenma's office Hiei found himself glancing back into it: and the last thing he saw was the ferry girl crying into one sleeve of its kimono.

"I thought I knew his heart," it said. "I never thought I could be so wrong about someone."

Hiei frowned slightly as he walked away. For some strange reason, hearing the ferry girl say those words had given him an eerie sense of déjà vu.

* * *

 **10 years later**

Hiei was pissed off. He had been awake and fighting for almost three days without rest or nutrition, and still Mukuro was refusing to show her face. She had, apparently, finally perfected a new technique she had been working on for many years, and Hiei was determined that he was going to be the first to see it. She had eventually promised to show it to him and sent him down to the basement to spar with some of her weaker, A class soldiers, telling him that she would come down and show him when she was free. Three days and over 400 deaths later, Hiei was still waiting.

The last few hours had been especially hard, because he had run out of soldiers to kill. He thought that perhaps he was not meant to have killed any of them, just to have trained with them, but he had become bored after the first day, and spraying blood around had cheered him up a little. The only options he had left to pass more time were to sleep or to start trashing the room and though both were appealing options, he could not really be bothered dealing with the inevitably sarcastic rant Mukuro would deliver it she caught him sleeping or breaking things.

The basement was a very dreary and depressing place to be, and although he was not there by choice and growing bored of being there, Hiei was not really sure that it was any worse than standing out by the borders of Mukuro's territory and watching helplessly as war raged on the horizon. Demon world was in a state of absolute chaos, arguably the worst it ever had been. The Spirit World Defence Force had returned to demon world and rebuilt the kakai barrier, which had erased the last shred of trust there had been between the two worlds. The border patrol had become defunct, and any humans that did accidentally enter demon world were dealt with in the old-fashioned way: they were tortured and ultimately killed. War was raging between all three factions of demon world because of a breakdown in communications, which had actually originated from some misspoken words by Mukuro's ambassador. Hiei wanted to be out on the frontline fighting, but Mukuro was, inexplicably, holding to an agreement she had made with Yomi and Yusuke ten years ago that she would not allow Hiei to leave her territory: as pointless as that was in such a time of unrest.

Hiei often thought about just going out into the thick of the fighting regardless. He had sometimes even dreamt of it: of literally cutting his way through the masses of fighters to reach the generals of the armies, Youko Kurama and Yusuke Urameshi. Even though he was still restricted to Mukuro's kingdom, Hiei had heard that Kurama had surrendered his existence in the human world and returned to demon world permanently, once more in his full-demon form. Yusuke had also permanently relocated to demon world, no longer in contact with those humans he had once liked so much – they were his enemies, and with the kakai barrier back up, he had no way to reach them anyway. And although Hiei personally did not care that there was a barrier preventing demons from passing between demon world and the living world, the events that had led up to its erection did infuriate him.

The Spirit World Defence Force had gone to the living world for a full month, gathering up all stray demons and returning them to their rightful places in demon world: and even though it had been almost three years since that time, Hiei could still hear Yukina's screams when she had been taken, by force, from the living world, from her friends and from that big orange-haired idiot that she had been so in love with.

Yukina was miserable in the ice village. She spent most of her time shut up in a small house on her own close to the graveyard, looking out at their mother's grave. Hiei often checked on her with his jagan eye, but she was almost always just sitting alone in that little house looking out at their mother's grave. It was reassuring that she was safe, but it also pissed him off that she was so boring and miserable all the time.

Looking down, Hiei saw that he still had the hiruiseki his sister had given him as well as his own. He doubted that she even thought about her missing brother any more. He did not know if he cared about that or not. He took hold of both of the stones he wore around his neck, studying them carefully. Looking at them still gave him that odd sense of peace that nothing else ever could, which was both confusing and quite pleasant.

"Feeling sorry for yourself again, Hiei?"

Hiei closed a fist around the hiruiseki and lifted his eyes, seeing Mukuro quietly walking towards him. He was a little annoyed that he had been unable to sense her approach much sooner but he pushed the thought aside and stuffed the hiruiseki under his shirt again.

"You've made me wait long enough," he said. "Show me your new trick."

"Trick?" she repeated, cocking a smirk that he was sure she knew would piss him off. "This isn't a trick, this is a very unique attack I'm hoping to use to change the way of things in demon world."

"You think it's enough for you to win the war and take over the entire world?" Hiei asked her.

She sighed and shook her head.

"You never did understand the subtleties of war, Hiei," she said.

"Hn, your ambassador was the one who ruined things for us all," Hiei replied.

"Yes, because of his inexperience in the role," Mukuro said tightly. "Unfortunately, a short-tempered little asshole killed my last diplomatic advisor, and I was forced to replace him at short notice…"

Hiei pulled a face at his boss: he could hardly believe that she was still holding a grudge about him killing that idiotic ambassador.

"Why was it that you killed him, Hiei?" she continued. "Remind me…"

"Hn, I don't remember," Hiei lied.

"I remember," Mukuro growled. "And I know that you do too. He called you a "human sympathiser" and you lost your temper like a child."

"It was an insult!" Hiei snapped. "A severe blow to my pride, if I hadn't killed him, others might have thought there was some truth in what he had said!"

"I remember a time when you were a human sympathiser, Hiei."

Hiei grabbed the hilt of his sword and swung it sharply out from its sheath, jolting involuntarily as a glowing orange line appeared in front of him, his blade passing through it before he could stop it. The blade broke apart easily, the tip falling to the ground on the other side of the orange line with a clatter that echoed almost painfully off the walls.

"You're familiar with this attack of mine, of course," Mukuro said, moving her hand through the air.

Hiei tensed as another orange line appeared behind him. It was so close to the back of his head that he could hear it crackling and feel the static of it making his hair stiffen at the back of his neck.

"Dividing Space," she continued, creating another division horizontally through the air directly above Hiei's head. "You know, that one attack of mine that, despite spending years trying to, you've never managed to overcome?"

Hiei bared his teeth and threw aside the broken remains of his sword.

"Well this new attack of mine is something similar," she said.

She was continually moving her hand, and looking about himself, Hiei could see that she was slowly creating a web around him, trapping him where he stood: obviously so that he would be unable to escape her new move.

"Hn, this is pointless," he said, smirking confidently. "Hit me as hard as you can, I need to understand this new attack so that I can beat it."

"You're going to regret those words, Hiei," Mukuro replied.

"I have no regrets," he replied. "I never have, and I never will. Just stop stalling and hit me, bitch."

Mukuro paused, and for a moment Hiei thought that she was about to turn around and leave him trapped in her web of divisions. After a few seconds he noticed that her hands were starting to glow as though she was charging an attack and he allowed himself a lop-sided smirk.

"So what do you call this one?" he asked.

"It's another dividing attack," she replied. "And I call it "Dividing Opinions"."

"That's a stupid fucking name," Hiei said. "It sounds weak. It had better not be."

"Alright then, let's call it "Dividing Realities"."

"…That's not any better. What does it do, exactly?"

"It does exactly what I'm trying to tell you: it divides reality."

"Hn. Nonsense."

"You realise I'm about to prove you wrong? I've tested this on many of my other men already, and I guarantee, it does divide reality."

"Just shut-up and get on with it."

"Fine!"

Mukuro chopped her hands down through the air in a cross motion, and an instant later a blast of energy hit Hiei in the abdomen. He cursed her name as it burned and he felt himself bleeding almost instantly. He was thrown backwards and rolled over in the air before hitting the ground and rolling over several times. As he had been surrounded by Dividing Space he expected that he would probably die or at least have a few limbs missing: but to his surprise, when he opened his eyes and looked himself over, the only obvious injury he had was the cross that had been gouged into his stomach from her new attack, and it was surprisingly shallow.

"Fuck you!" he yelled out across the basement. "Why do you always hold back on me?"

Hiei got to his feet. He could barely feel his wound. Clearly Mukuro had been taking the piss out of him by only using a fraction of her true strength to attack him. He was so sick of her going easy on him. He poked a finger into his wound and found that it was reasonably deep, but nothing that would not heal in a day or two even without any medical treatment. Mukuro would probably put him into one of her healing chambers and it would be gone in less than an hour.

Hiei lifted his head.

Something was wrong.

Hiei looked about himself slowly, the sense that something seriously bizarre had happened slowly dawning on him. The hundreds of dead bodies that had been stinking out the room were all gone. There was not even a trace of blood left to indicate their presence. Mukuro was gone too. He was completely alone in the basement.

Hiei slowly looked himself over. His sword was at his hip. He pulled it from its sheath and found it to be once more in one piece. He replaced it and then tugged at his shirt. He was sure that it had been black before Mukuro had attacked him, but now it was blue. He released his shirt and as it touched against his chest again he felt something that made him feel sick with panic: he only had one hiruiseki hanging around his neck.

He quickly pulled the chain up and over his head, looking down at it with wide eyes. It was his own hiruiseki that he had, the one Mukuro had returned to him, but Yukina's stone was gone. He started looking about desperately to see where it might have fallen, since it had presumably been broken off when Mukuro had attacked him. Hiei scurried about the basement for several minutes, but to no avail. He resorted to using his jagan eye, focusing on trying to find his sister's stone: and what he did see made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

The stone was around the neck of that orange-haired idiot, and he was dancing around the halls of a temple wearing it, followed by Yukina, who was laughing and clapping her hands at his display of idiocy. Yukina was dressed in modern human clothes, and she was quite clearly with Kuwabara, and they were quite obviously in the living world.

What the hell was going on?

* * *

 **Next Chapter** : It's horror all around for Hiei as he realises that he has been sent to an alternate reality, one where there is no war in demon world, he can move freely between territories and he can even access the living world: where he finds that his own life is quite drastically different. **Chapter 2: Dividing Opinions.**


	2. Dividing Opinions

**A/N:** I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho or any of the characters herein, they are all the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. Except Hitoshi the ambassador/diplomat. And Monzan the sprog!

 **OCs and mild sexual content warnings.**

* * *

 **Chapter 2: Dividing Opinions**

Hiei stomped into Mukuro's chambers without bothering to knock – not that he ever had. Inside he found her sitting in her enormous chair, laughing at something one of her soldiers had just said.

"How the fuck did you get back up here so quickly?" he demanded.

"Hiei!" she said, looking genuinely surprised to see him. "Back already?"

"We were in the middle of a fight, you ignorant bitch!" he yelled back.

She tilted her head slightly and gave him an almost pitying look.

"Aw, the little guy's just keen to spar with you so that he can get back home again!"

Hiei turned sharply at the sound of the voice behind him and he could not stop his jaw from dropping shamelessly at what he saw.

"Hitoshi, come in," Mukuro said.

Hitoshi smiled and reached a hand out towards Hiei.

"How's my little human sympathiser, huh?" he asked.

Hiei was so shocked that he actually let Hitoshi ruffle his fingers through his hair.

"How are you alive?" he asked in a low voice.

Hitoshi laughed openly as though he thought Hiei's question was a great joke.

"You never change, Hiei!" he concluded.

"I killed you with my own hands!" Hiei argued.

"Yes, you threaten to do just that every time I see you," Hitoshi replied, before continuing across the room towards Mukuro.

Hitoshi was Mukuro's ambassador – or at least, he had been before Hiei had killed him for publicly calling him a human sympathiser. It was not possible that he could have survived, because Hiei had made a point of chopping him up and burning every last piece of him. This really made no sense at all.

"Where's Yukina's hiruiseki?" Hiei demanded.

He held out one fist, which was still clenched around the chain of his own teargem.

"You gave it back to Yukina, you idiot!" Mukuro told him bluntly.

"When?" he asked. "How?"

Mukuro rolled her one visible eye.

"When you told her that you're her brother?" she said almost too sarcastically. "You told her before the wedding. We were all surprised that you did, but we just assumed it was part of that weird change you went through back then."

"…What?"

"Oh for fuck's sake Hiei, go home and pester your family, I don't have time for this."

"…My what?"

Mukuro sighed.

"You're injured, I'm not fighting you right now," she said.

Hiei looked down at the wound on his abdomen.

"You did this to me, you psychotic wench!" he yelled irritably.

"No I didn't, Hiei!" she replied.

"Yes you did! You used your stupid new attack on me!"

"I don't have a new attack!"

"Yes you do! You've been working on it for years! Your "Dividing Opinions", or whatever the hell you called it!"

""Dividing Opinions"? That's not an attack name!"

"Dividing Realities! You called it Dividing Realities!"

Mukuro paused, looking serious and thoughtful at last.

"…I was never able to perfect that attack," she said quietly. "But I also never told anyone that I was working on it. How the hell did you find out?"

"Because you used it on me, you bitch!" Hiei shot back.

"What sort of attack was it, if you don't mind me asking?" Hitoshi asked Mukuro.

"It was literally what it sounds like: it divided reality," she answered him. "The idea was that it would send the victim to an alternate reality. I tested it a few times but I was never able to bring the test subjects back to their own realities afterwards, so I don't know if they really got there or if they were just wiped out of existence."

"An alternate reality?" Hiei echoed, eying Hitoshi over as he spoke. "You mean like another universe, where everything is different?"

"Exactly," Mukuro replied.

"Oh fuck," Hiei growled.

He pulled his hirui stone on over his head and turned around, fleeing from Mukuro's room. Obviously Mukuro's stupid attack had worked: she had sent him to another reality, one where he had not killed her ambassador Hitoshi and one where he had told Yukina that she was his sister. A reality where Yukina still lived in the living world, and with Kuwabara no less: obviously the Spirit World Defence Force had not found her in their sweep of the living world in this reality. There was no way he could get to her with the Kakai Barrier in the way, but he did know one person he could get to who might be able to help him make some sense of what was going on around him.

It was going to be difficult to reach the one he sought, since they were key warriors of opposing armies in the ongoing war, but he was determined to try. He just hoped that Kurama would want to speak to him after all this time.

* * *

"Hi, Hiei!"

Hiei skidded to a halt, almost falling on his own backside in his awkwardness. Everywhere he went things were seriously messed up and clearly indicative that he was in another universe. There was no sign of the ongoing war anywhere, he had passed two border patrol vehicles that looked as though they were performing the function they had stopped doing after the return of the Kakai Barrier, and he had reached the heart of Yomi's territory without anyone questioning him.

And now Yomi's brat kid was talking at him like he was a friend.

"What are you doing here?" the brat asked him.

The kid had grown into an adult, but he was still a bratty kid in Hiei's eyes.

"Looking for Kurama," Hiei told him. "Where is he?"

"You won't find Kurama here!" the kid snorted, as though Hiei had just said something ridiculous.

"Youko Kurama is the general of your father's army!" Hiei pointed out.

"My father doesn't have an army!" the kid replied. "He doesn't need one! Why would he? And you know that Kurama is still living as Shuichi Minamino in the living world!"

"What?" Hiei echoed. "He's in the living world? But how is that even possible? What about the… How is that possible? What about the Kakai Barrier?"

"The what barrier?"

"The Kakai Barrier, the barrier that stops demons entering the living world!"

"…There's no such thing…"

"…Fuck!"

Hiei turned around and ran off again, ignoring the brat, who was calling something after him. Hiei ran all the way to the nearest border patrol route before following it to the nearest portal to the living world. If there truly was no Kakai Barrier in this reality then spirit world's ruling be damned: Hiei was going to the living world. He took a deep breath and leapt through the portal, closing his eyes and anticipating being burnt alive or split apart by the dreaded Kakai Barrier, but instead all he felt was the odd distortion of air as he moved from the putrid and heavy air of demon world into the fresh and light air of the living world.

Hiei opened his eyes as his feet hit the ground and he looked about himself. It had been so long since he had seen the blue skies of the human world that he had almost forgotten how pretty they were.

Hiei scrunched up his face: he hated the human world, and he hated pretty things.

But he did feel strangely pleased to see the human world again.

Hiei quickly shook himself off and started to run. He was in the city Kurama had lived in when he had lived with his human mother and he was hoping to find the fox demon in that same place. He was still reeling from being in a universe where demon world was not at war, Kurama was still in his human form, Yukina knew that he was her brother and demons could freely pass into the living world.

Hiei could not even remember why he had been banned from going to the living world in the first place, he just knew that, lately, the Kakai Barrier had been what had stopped him.

Hiei turned a corner and started down the street Kurama's human family lived on, running straight past the very green shop-front on his right before registering what it was. Hiei stopped and turned on the spot, staring back in disbelief. He was looking at a plant shop that had displays spilling out onto the street, and two figures in aprons were merrily watering the potted plants for sale, chatting between themselves.

"Kurama?" Hiei said far too loudly.

The man in the apron with long red hair pulled back into a ponytail looked up at the sound of Hiei's voice, green eyes meeting red, and for a prolonged moment, both stared at each other in mild horror.

"Hiei?" Kurama eventually said. "What are you doing here?"

"Hn," Hiei scoffed, finally feeling a little more familiar with his circumstances. "That's exactly what I'd like to know!"

He walked back over to his one-time ally, eying him over slowly.

"Hiei, you're hurt!" Kurama said, putting down the watering can he had been using. "Were you sparring with Mukuro again? Still can't defeat that Dividing Space?"

Hiei's face dropped as Kurama smiled at him warmly in a way he had not done in so long.

"I'm…" Hiei began. "I was… Yes, I was fighting with Mukuro."

"Oh dear," a female voice behind him said. "Did she kick your ass again?"

Hiei spun around to see a young woman with very soft black hair smiling at him as though she knew who he was.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

"Wow!" she said, grinning widely. "Mukuro hit you really hard this time, huh Hiei?"

Hiei eyed her over in disgust, his eyes pausing at her chest as he sighted a nametag on her apron. He studied it before turning to Kurama.

"Who the hell is Maya?" he asked.

"Maya's my partner, Hiei," Kurama replied. "And I think she might be right: I think Mukuro maybe did hit you a little too hard if you can't even remember that!"

"Partner?" Hiei echoed. "You mean your business partner?"

Kurama looked over Hiei's head at Maya, smiling at her and blushing slightly.

"Yes, we are partners in business," he said, lowering his eyes to Hiei again. "But we're lovers too."

Hiei cursed loudly and forcefully enough to scare off a man from the other side of the street.

"I think we should get you home, Hiei," Kurama said sternly. "Obviously you need some rest."

"I was home!" Hiei snapped. "And the bitch sent me away! She was mocking me!"

Kurama's eyebrows shot up.

"I can't imagine that bothering you," he said quietly.

Hiei wondered if he and Kurama were speaking about the same thing, but he did not have the patience to find out.

"Where's Yukina?" he asked instead.

"At Genkai's temple with Kuwabara," Kurama replied as though it was the most obvious thing in all three worlds.

Hiei nodded and took off again. He knew where the old lady's temple was, and maybe he would get more sensible answers there. He had to find out what was going on and how he was going to get back to his own reality – if that was even possible. It might not be, he thought miserably, and he might be stuck in this messed up reality forever more, if what Mukuro had said about never being able to bring victims of her attack back to their own realities was true.

Hiei ran faster.

He was soon running through woodland and towards the ridiculously long staircase that led up to the old lady's temple. His injury was starting to bother him but he almost welcomed the distraction, because he was growing increasingly worried about this strange universe he found himself in. Kurama had told him to go home, but, worryingly, so had Mukuro. His home was in Mukuro's fortress, so why had she told him to go home? And why was Hitoshi still calling him a human sympathiser? And why had he had not killed him for doing so in this reality?

And, most worryingly of all, why had he decided to tell Yukina that they were siblings? Surely he had been out of his mind the day that had happened.

Hiei kept running at full speed until he was inside the temple, only then slowing to a brisk march. He did not have to expend any effort searching for Yukina, because he could hear Kuwabara singing atonally as soon as he was indoors. He followed the sound to its source and, just as he had seen with his jagan eye earlier, Yukina and Kuwabara were dancing about together.

"Brother!" Yukina cried as she spotted him. "What a surprise! What are you doing here?"

She hurried over to him and he tensed, expecting the worst, like a hug he would have to pretend to be okay with.

"We thought you were in demon world this week?" she asked, stopping in front of him and smiling at him sweetly.

Hiei waited until he was sure that she was not going to hug him before answering her.

"I'm trying to get home," he said carefully.

"You dog, Hiei!" Kuwabara said, grinning in a lecherous fashion that made Hiei's anger flare. "Couldn't stay away, huh?"

"Fuck you, Kuwabara!" Hiei snapped.

Kuwabara's grin slowly faded.

"Well at least you're still acting like yourself," he grumbled. "Though if I was Mukuro I would have cut you a lot deeper than that…"

"Did you come home to get your wound healed, brother?" Yukina asked Hiei.

Hiei did not answer her immediately, instead keeping his attention on Kuwabara. Apparently, even in this reality, he hated Kuwabara, which was at least something of a relief.

"Yes," he eventually said, turning his attention to his twin sister. "I'm trying to get home to heal this wound."

She nodded and smiled gently.

"I would offer to heal it for you, but I know you don't like me making a fuss," she said.

"That's right, I don't," he said.

"You look a little pale," Yukina added. "Would you like some tea? Or are you just keen to get home?"

"I'm determined to get home," Hiei said. "I'm just… Not really sure how I get there…"

"Did Mukuro hit you on the head too?" Kuwabara immediately asked.

"…Maybe…" Hiei replied, glaring at him. "So if I was going home now, which way would I go?"

"Oh dear, you can't remember where you live?" Yukina asked, becoming almost tearful. "But you adore your lovely home, Hiei! I can still remember the day you told us you wanted to live so close by, I was so happy!"

"…I live close by?" Hiei asked in a low voice.

"Damn Hiei, Mukuro hit you really hard, huh?" Kuwabara asked.

"Yes, really, really hard," Hiei lied. "And it's completely messed me up. Now tell me how I get home."

"I'll show you the way," Yukina said.

Hiei stiffened involuntarily as she slid her arm through his: she was wearing a sleeveless dress and the feeling of her bare arm against his was unexpected and a little too much too soon for his liking, but he did not argue. She gently guided him back out of the temple and walked him across the gardens to the edge of the forest.

"There, see?" she said, stopping as they entered the thick of the trees.

Hiei looked in the direction she was pointing, and he almost laughed at what he saw. The trees were thickly packed for a short distance until they opened out into a small clearing around a ring of especially large trees, between which had been built a wooden shack a good thirty feet up from the ground. The sun seemed to be shining down directly onto it as though it was literally a little piece of paradise.

"I live in a tree-house?" Hiei asked flatly. "I live in a tree-house, in the living world?"

"Oh Hiei, you should go and lie down for a bit," Yukina suggested.

He nodded and slid his arm from hers, continuing on alone. He was going to find a loophole in this fucked up reality and get back to his rightful reality, where he intended to beat the shit out of Mukuro for sending him there in the first place. He was not even sure that he believed what was happening to him: maybe he would wake up soon and it would all be a part of a seriously disturbed nightmare. He began climbing a rope ladder up towards what seemed to be the front door of the house, all the while wondering if Mukuro – the Mukuro from his reality – could see him right then, and if she found his situation amusing.

Once he reached the top of the ladder Hiei wasted no time entering the house. He walked straight through the small entranceway and into a large open living area, only stopping when he noticed several things that told him he was not in his own home. There were pictures of his friends on the walls, mostly including him, but he was not the sort to keep such things, so he knew that this was not his house. There was a teddy bear on the sofa – Hiei was slightly disturbed that he actually knew what a teddy bear was – there was a vase of flowers in the middle of a small table in the centre of the room and the whole place smelled fresh. And someone was singing.

Hiei tensed, his right hand instinctively moving to his sword. He silently curled his fingers around the hilt of his weapon and edged towards the sound, taking himself towards a partly open sliding door. He slipped out of it and found himself standing out on an open boardwalk that seemed to be in the centre of the house. There was a wooden rocking horse by one wall – how did he know what a rocking horse was? – a wooden box filled with sand and some colourful plastic items and strings running across the whole area, supporting wet linen and, very worryingly, some clothes that looked like his own.

And there was still a soft, feminine voice singing in the middle of it all.

Hiei drew out his sword and reached it out towards one of the wet sheets, pushing it aside with his blade and peering around it. Ahead of him a woman was pinning more clothes onto one of the strings whilst quietly singing to herself. She was dressed like a casual maid, in a plain mid-length, sleeveless blue dress and a scarf around her head. Her feet were bare and she seemed surprisingly relaxed. And she was clearly human.

Was she his servant?

She finished pinning up the last of the clothes and picked up a basket. She turned around, at first not seeing him and still singing her song. She took a step towards him before finally noticing him, at which point she yelped and dropped the basket, clutching her hands to her chest. She looked quite frightened but she quickly broke into an enormous grin.

"Oh, Hiei!" she laughed. "You startled me! That was very mean of you to sneak up on me like that!"

Hiei stayed still, watching her warily. The look on her face changed to an almost predatory one and she started moving towards him, purposefully swinging her hips as she did so.

"Not that I'm not loving this," she said in a low voice. "I thought you were gone for the week, this is a very nice surprise, and I–oh my goodness, you're hurt!"

Hiei shirked back out of her reach as she tried to touch her hands to his wound. What sort of reality was this that he let humans into his own home and they thought that they could just walk right up to him and start touching him?

"I'll heal that for you right away," she said.

"No," he said sternly.

To his surprise she smiled, touching her hands to her face in an almost bashful fashion.

"My hero!" she said softly. "You're so considerate, Hiei. It still surprises me. Oh, I shouldn't say that, but it does Hiei. Every time you say or do something compassionate I just go weak at the knees and fall in love with you all over again."

Hiei heard as much as felt his sword slip from his grasp and clatter against the floor. The woman stepped forwards and put her hands on his shoulders. She leaned into him and brought her lips to his in a gesture so tender he almost felt weak at the knees himself.

"Come on inside, at least let me put a dressing on that nasty wound," she whispered as her lips left his.

Her face was still mere inches from his and she was gazing into his eyes in a way that nobody ever had before. It was like an exaggerated version of the look Hiei had often seen Kuwabara give to Yukina: apparently this pitiful human woman was quite hopelessly in love with him, and apparently he let her live with him. This really was a messed up reality.

She took Hiei's hand and led him inside. He did not even bother to resist or to retrieve his sword from the floor. She took him to a bedroom that smelled like flowers and fresh living world air and encouraged him to sit on one edge of the bed. He only relaxed a little when she left the room, taking the opportunity to look about himself. It was all so human he felt sick, but nothing could have prepared him for what he found proudly displayed on the nightstand.

Hiei slowly picked up the framed photograph, his eyes growing larger as the image got closer to his face and it become more obvious just what it depicted. It was, quite clearly, a wedding photograph. A human wedding photograph. It showed Yusuke, Kurama and even Kuwabara in suits, and Yukina, Yusuke's human girlfriend and Kuwabara's sister in pink dresses. And, in the centre of it all, Hiei was standing in a pale blue suit, his arm linked through that of the woman who lived with him, and she was wearing a white dress and veil.

Everyone in the picture, including Hiei, looked ridiculously happy.

Hiei replaced the picture to the nightstand as the woman returned to the room carrying some bandages.

"We're married?" he blurted out as she knelt on the floor in front of him.

She smiled.

"I love the way you say it," she said, placing down the bandages. "You always say it like you're surprised, like you'd forgotten. It makes me feel special. Like you're still amazed that I finally said yes."

"I asked you to marry me?" he asked.

"Oh Hiei, behave yourself!" she said, feigning annoyance. "Now take off that shirt so that I can clean you up."

"It's fine," Hiei lied. "…I asked you to marry me?"

She smiled again, apparently not in the least bothered that he was asking her something that he probably ought to already know the answer to.

"You didn't want a human wedding, but I did," she said. "I thought it was more appropriate, while I was stuck in this body."

Hiei frowned, feeling even more confused than before. The woman stood up and started pulling at his shirt, soon freeing it from his pants. She started to tug it upwards and he found himself lifting his arms to let her continue.

"How long have…" he said faintly. "I mean when did…?"

"Mukuro hit you really hard this time, didn't she?" the woman asked.

She flung his shirt aside and began wiping at his wound with a damp cloth.

"I'm not hurting you, am I?" she asked, kneeling in front of him again.

"Don't be stupid!" he snapped.

She smiled again.

"That's more like the Hiei I know and love!" she said.

Hiei tensed. So it was true. In this messed up reality, he was actually married to a human woman.

"Will you be staying here today?" she asked him.

"Sure, why not?" he replied sarcastically.

"Then take it off," she said quietly.

There was a slightly threatening tone in her last words but she had her head down as she began preparing a dressing for his wound so he could not see her face to gauge what she was referring to and how serious it was.

"I-I don't like it," she said quietly. "I know you probably have to for safety, but I don't like it."

"What are you talking about?" Hiei asked her.

She lifted her head and, amazingly, she was smiling at him again.

"You don't even know what's bothering me!" she said. "How silly is that? I know it's silly, but I love you so much Hiei, and I'm so proud of you, I just everyone to know how much I care."

Hiei shook his head slightly, jerking involuntarily as she took one of his hands in both of hers. He watched her carefully, only noticing then that he had tape around the base of one of the fingers on his left hand. She immediately began picking it off, and as she unwound it Hiei slowly began to sweat. She was uncovering a wedding ring, one that matched the one she wore. This was getting progressively worse, Hiei thought darkly.

"There we are!" she said cheerfully.

She set about bandaging over his wound and they said no more to each other. Hiei kept his eyes on the roof, mainly because the sight of a human woman draping her head over his mid-section was far too disturbing to fathom. Once she was done she suggested that he lie down on the bed and he did so, if only in the hope that he might fall asleep and wake up back in a reality that made sense. He closed his eyes and relaxed into the bed, which was far softer than he would usually like but felt nicely supportive. He vaguely felt the woman climbing onto the bottom of the bed but thought nothing of it until he felt her opening the two belts of his pants.

Hiei opened all three of his eyes and glared at her accusingly. She smiled at him in that predatory manner again and slid the belts from his pants altogether before crawling along the bed towards his head. Her hands reached up and did something behind his head but he did not see what as his eyes were still on hers. She took one of his hands and lifted it up over his head and he did not resist or react until he felt her winding one of his belts around his wrist.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he demanded.

She did not answer him, instead lifting up his other wrist. He was not really sure why he did not fight against what she was doing – maybe it was the look on her face, maybe it was the small part of him that was curious to know what she was doing or maybe he was just disabled from shock that a human woman would dare tie him up in what was probably his own bed. Once she had secured his hands she lifted one leg over him and sat onto his hips, smiling down at him. He pulled at his bonds slightly, knowing only too well that he could easily just break out of them at any time.

"What are you doing?" he asked her.

"I know you're probably too hurt to make love to me, but that doesn't mean we can't still have some fun…" she said.

Hiei was horrified. He could not think of any words that had ever had such a profound effect on him. This could not be happening. He watched her shuffle down until she was sat on his knees, at which point she grabbed her hands at the waistband of his pants and tugged downwards with far more force than was necessary, exposing him in one swift motion.

"What…?" he muttered.

She was going to die, he decided. He no longer cared that she was apparently his wife. No woman treated him like a sex toy and lived to talk about it. He ran through his options for killing her swiftly in his mind, trying to decide on which he would enjoy the most.

"Fuh–!" he grunted as she suddenly grabbed a hand around a part of his body she had no right to be touching.

She smiled at his reaction and began moving her hand. Hiei took a deep breath, silently cursing his own body for betraying him. He was sickened at the very thought of being with a human woman, but unfortunately his body could not make the same differences that his mind could, and physically he was quickly reacting to her touch. He was still at a point where he could push her off and end the madness, but he could not bring himself to talk in case he accidentally let out a groan of pleasure, which he feared he was close to doing.

When she slid down his legs and he felt her tongue joining her fingers Hiei knew that it was too late.

He closed his eyes and clamped his jaws together, trying to stop his body from completely betraying him, but already knowing that it was hopeless. Her touches were far more pleasurable than they ought to be and in a sickeningly short amount of time he climaxed. He could not even tell where or how it had happened – had it been her hands or her mouth that had finally pushed him over the edge? By the time he had the courage to open his eyes again she was gone.

He growled and pulled his wrists free, sitting up in the bed. He pushed his hair back from his sweating forehead, looking about himself angrily. His eyes kept wandering back to the framed photograph at the side of the bed, flicking between the image of him marrying the human woman and the ring he was wearing on his finger. He tried to think logically: this was just an alternate reality. That meant that this was just the same as the reality he had come from, except for one thing. Somewhere in the past one thing had happened in his life that had created this strange new life where he was married to a human and he lived in the human world in a tree-house.

"Fuck," Hiei grunted.

No one thing could possibly have caused all of that. And it did not explain why there was no war in demon world, why Hitoshi was still alive, why there was no Kakai Barrier or why Kurama was still a human.

"Hey!" Hiei barked out. "Woman! Where's Yusuke?"

Maybe if he found out what had happened to Yusuke he could figure out how to get out of this mess, he decided.

"He's working today," the woman called back to him from another room. "But he's coming over to Genkai's for dinner tomorrow. You could phone him if you urgently need to speak to him."

"Working?" Hiei asked.

"Yes," she called back. "He's still working at the Yukimura restaurant as a chef."

"…In this world? Yusuke is living in this world too?"

The woman leaned her head into the room.

"Hiei, did you take a blow to the head?" she asked.

"Maybe," he replied. "Nothing's making any sense, so maybe…"

"Try to get some sleep," she suggested. "You like a nap at this time of day, and you'll heal that wound yourself if you sleep now."

"…How do you know that I like to sleep at this time of day?"

"Hiei, stop it! It's cute that you're always surprised at how well I know you, but we've been married for almost eight years now! I know you better than you know yourself, and you know it!"

Hiei shook his head, a great counter-argument appearing in his mind and then vanishing just as quickly as the woman pulled her scarf from her head and long waves of blue hair fell loose about her face. What sort of human woman had blue hair? And she had pink eyes: that was not exactly normal for a human either.

"Go on, get some sleep," she insisted.

She moved back into the room and touched hand to the top of his head, gently playing her fingers through his hair. His face was level with her stomach, and as his eyes wandered over it, he felt another wave of nausea crash into him. She was very slim – but not overly so, still keeping a nicely curved figure – but she had a slight roundness to her stomach.

"Oh fuck, you're pregnant," he blurted out.

He suddenly found his hands on her stomach, the feeling of the firm and slight mound beneath his palms only confirming his concerns. He could even feel the demonic energy coming out of the child, and there was no denying that it was his.

"Stop it," she said, grabbing his wrists and pushing his hands back.

He looked up at her, finding her looking slightly angry for the first time since his arrival.

"Don't you dare tell me what it is," she said firmly. "I know that you know, but I want it to be a surprise. I don't mind if it's a boy or a girl, but I don't want to know right now."

It was a boy. Hiei decided not to tell her anyway, since that was probably what the Hiei in this reality would do. And because he was at a complete loss for words. He was a few months away from being a father to a son, and thoughts of himself as a vicious ball of fire that was thrown from the ice village haunted his mind. The child was already strong, and giving birth to it would surely kill this frail creature in front of him.

"Did we want this?" he asked.

It was probably the wrong thing to say, but he had to know. Surely it had been a mistake, after all. He had never wanted children, and any human who wanted to have his children was even more ridiculous.

"This time we did," she replied, before kissing him on the lips.

She gently ruffled his hair and gave him one more smile before leaving the room again. The second she was out of sight Hiei got up, almost tripping over as his pants fell around his ankles. He quickly pulled them up and raked through drawers and wardrobes until he found replacement belts for the ones he had broken. Once he had his pants secured in place he found another shirt – it was red, which was absurd, but he did not want to waste time worrying about the colour of his shirt – and as he pulled it on he opened the window. Before he was fully dressed he had leapt out into the trees outside, and by the time he was fully dressed he was already running down the temple steps.

This was madness, and he wanted out.

* * *

"Hiei?"

Hiei stopped in front of Kurama, breathing heavily.

"Are you alright? You look awful!" Kurama told him.

"Something's really, really wrong," Hiei replied. "And you're a clever bastard, I need you to fix it for me, or else just tell me what I have to do to make it stop."

Kurama looked about himself nervously as though he was afraid that Hiei's words might land them in trouble somehow.

"Maya?" he called over to his woman. "Can you look after things here for five minutes please?"

"Sure thing, babe!" she called back.

"Babe?" Hiei echoed, glaring at Kurama in disbelief.

"She is my lover, Hiei," Kurama reminded him. "Come on outside."

Hiei followed Kurama out of his shop onto the street outside.

"There's something different about you, Hiei," Kurama said. "I noticed it when you came here earlier today. I can't explain it, it's almost like you're not yourself."

"I'm not myself!" Hiei replied. "I knew you would understand!"

Hiei smiled, touching a hand to Kurama's shoulder.

"You always understand, you're a clever bastard," he said. "You always piss me off, you always know exactly what to do, you always keep your head, and I could always…"

Hiei slowly stopped talking. His eyes fell to his hand, which was gripped into Kurama's shoulder in a way that was probably almost painful for him. It was quite strange, because Hiei could never remember touching Kurama like that before, and he would have thought that if he ever had done something like that Kurama would have reacted differently.

"It's been a long time…" he said quietly. "Ten years… We've been apart longer than we were together…"

Hiei missed Kurama.

"I know exactly what's going on here, Hiei," Kurama said in his usual calm and controlled tone, that tone that often irked Hiei but had always reassured him in a crisis: that tone that he had never realised until then just how much he had missed. "You're panicking about the baby."

"What?" Hiei echoed, his eyes moving to Kurama's.

"It will all be alright Hiei," Kurama said.

He raised one hand and nodded his head at something behind and beyond Hiei.

"And if you need reassurance of that, I suggest you get into that car and remind yourself why everything will be alright," Kurama said.

Hiei looked back over his shoulder, seeing a car stopped at the other side of the road. The driver's window was rolled down and Kuwabara was leaning out of it giving him a grin that was begging to be punched off his face.

"Hey Hiei, get in!" he called over. "Mon-Mon's seen you already, he won't give me any peace if you don't!"

Hiei did not understand a single word out of the human's mouth other than his own name, but when he turned to Kurama he nodded at him in a way that told him getting into the car was the right thing to do. Hiei nodded back and took his hand from Kurama's shoulder. He paused to look down at his hand, still unsure what had possessed him to make that contact.

"I'll see you tomorrow night," Kurama told him.

"If I'm still here," Hiei replied.

"You're going back to demon world?" Kurama asked. "In that case I'll see you next week."

Hiei wanted to ask Kurama if they saw each other every week in this dimension. He wanted to ask if they were still friends, he wanted to ask what had happened to Yusuke and what was going on in demon world, he wanted to know why there was no Kakai Barrier, but he felt an odd desire to get into the car with Kuwabara and it ultimately took him across the street.

"So are you staying here now?" Kuwabara asked him as he got into the car.

"For now," Hiei replied. "Until I can figure out a way to get back to my own… What's that?"

"I'll tell Yukina to make dinner for you," Kuwabara said. "You'll be coming for dinner tonight, right?"

"Do I usually come for dinner?"

"No, but sometimes you do."

"Well maybe I… What is that?"

"I know you don't say much, but I kinda like it when you're there. Otherwise it's just me and the women."

"My wife and my sister. I live in a tree-house with my human wife outside of a… What the fuck is that?"

"What's what?"

Hiei turned to glare at Kuwabara, who afforded him several brief glances, trying to mostly keep his attention on the road as he drove.

"There's something in this car," Hiei said quietly. "It's not entirely human. What the fuck is it?"

"Well, it's Mon-Mon, isn't it?" Kuwabara asked nervously.

"Mon-Mon?" Hiei yelled. "What the fuck is "Mon-Mon"?"

"Sorry, Monzan!" Kuwabara quickly replied. "It's just that Yukina calls him Mon-Mon!"

Hiei started to sweat, but his entire body had gone cold. He slowly turned in his seat, peering around the headrest at the backseat of the car. Directly behind him a strange contraption had been mounted onto the seat of the car and there was a child sitting in it: a half-demon, spiky haired little boy with three eyes and a face remarkably like his own.

Hiei slowly turned around again and sat down, pressing his back against the car-seat.

"This time…" he muttered. "She said we wanted it this time because we've already done it… I already have a son with that woman… Fuck!"

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei is reunited with Yusuke and finds himself doing something very bizarre. Hiei learns the one thing that happened differently in this alternate universe and is shocked at how small is was and what a huge impact it had on the lives of everyone around him. **Chapter 3: The Difference**


	3. The Difference

**A/N:** I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho or any of the characters herein, they are all the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. Except Hitoshi the ambassador/diplomat. And Monzan the sprog!

Mon-Mon/Monzan/Monzan Kadokura and the naming of him is a reference to the "sad" Mon-Mon ending of Yo-Jin-Bo (another one, God I love that game/novel).

* * *

 **Chapter 3: The Difference**

"What the fuck are you doing?"

Kuwabara stopped, staring at Hiei warily as he slowly pushed the car door shut.

"I was just lifting Mon-Mon – sorry, Monzan – out of the car," he said.

"You're still holding him," Hiei pointed out.

Kuwabara hurriedly put the child down onto the ground and held up his hands.

"I know you've never been able to pick him up, I just thought it would be easier this way," he said. "I was just trying to help."

"I've never picked him up?" Hiei echoed. "Why not?"

"You don't like hugs?"

"Fucking right I don't!"

"Hiei, don't use language like that in front of Mon-Mon!"

Hiei turned abruptly, finding Yukina suddenly behind him.

"Yukina!" the child said, reaching his arms up towards her.

"It can talk?" Hiei said, turning to Kuwabara again.

"…He's almost four years old," Kuwabara replied.

"But…"

Hiei glanced around Kuwabara, Yukina and Monzan.

"Wait," he said, turning to Kuwabara again. "Why is my son called Monzan?"

"You didn't have much choice in that, Hiei!" Yukina said, laughing slightly.

"Yeah, your wife was determined to call her first son Monzan, after Monzan Kadokura, the famous warrior," Kuwabara explained. "Maybe she'll let you name the next one, huh?"

Kuwabara patted Hiei on the shoulder and Hiei quickly shirked away from him.

"Do you usually touch me?" he asked.

"…No, I just thought that maybe since we're friends…" Kuwabara said nervously.

"Have I ever said that you're my friend?" Hiei asked.

"No," Kuwabara replied.

"So everything about you is exactly the same in this universe," Hiei said aloud, barely caring when Yukina and Kuwabara both gave him curious looks. "And everything about Yukina is the same except that she knows I'm her brother now. So what the hell happened differently that I ended up marrying a damn human?"

Hiei looked down at the child again. It had not looked directly at him yet, but he suspected that it was deliberately avoiding looking at him. It was a little bit overweight and did not look like the focused killing machine that he had been at that age. He supposed that its human genes had weakened it and slowed its growth somehow, though the demonic energy it possessed was of a level that he could be proud of as a father.

Though the thought of being a proud father made him feel decidedly sick.

Did Mukuro know that he had a child with a human mother?

"Hey, big guy!"

The kid turned around and started running towards the voice that had just spoken. Hiei watched bemusedly as the child ran to his wife, who picked him up and spun him around before holding him to her chest and kissing him repeatedly. In that moment he saw something he had not noticed before. The boy had his red eyes and his hairstyle – complete with the starburst of white – but his hair was not black, rather it was a very dark blue, and although he had many of Hiei's features, he had the same smile as his mother and some subtle features of her face. Seeing her with the child it was clear that it was hers. And his.

Hiei turned away. This was hell. He had to get out of this messed up world. Maybe he would just go back to demon world.

"I'm making dinner, are you joining us, Hiei?" Yukina asked him.

Hiei turned to his sister, and saw something else he had not noticed until that moment. She was happy. She was not smiling brilliantly at that moment – in fact she looked quite apprehensive as though she was expecting him to refuse her offer and disappoint her – but her eyes were completely different to the dull eyes of the girl he had been seeing stuck alone in a small house in the ice village the last few years. Maybe his own life was a complete disaster in this universe, but Yukina's was not. In this reality, Yukina was happy and she had not been taken away from her friends and returned to that horrible place that he knew she despised every bit as much as he did.

"Yes," he said mechanically.

She smiled so brilliantly Hiei almost wanted to smile himself. But only almost.

* * *

Hiei could not stop looking at the child. He was still amazed that it existed. It had been a mistake, his wife had said as much. But it was there. She had given birth to it and survived and was even brave enough to get pregnant again. It was a happy child, though quiet and quite singular. It seemed to really, really like Kuwabara, and Hiei thought that maybe that was because Kuwabara played with it and cuddled it, which was something Hiei could not do – even the Hiei that belonged in this reality had apparently not done those things.

In fact, the Hiei in this reality was just like he was. He wished he could figure out what had happened to make this reality come about.

The child had toys and he actually played with them. Hiei had never played with anything in his entire life. But now he was married to a human woman, he lived in the human world, in a tree-house, close to his sister and Kuwabara, and he had a son who played with toys and another child on the way.

"Why did you have my child?" he asked, turning to his wife.

She laughed at his question, though he had not meant it as a joke.

"You didn't plan it," Kuwabara said bluntly. "Mon-Mon was an accident, right?"

Hiei opened his mouth to tell the idiot not to bother answering questions he had asked other people but his wife spoke before he could, shocking him with her response.

"Kuwabara, don't you dare say that about my son!" she snapped, looking surprisingly vicious in her anger. "Monzan was a blessing, and I love him very much!"

"But you didn't plan to have kids!" Kuwabara protested. "It was just an accident because you two were having lots of…"

Yukina glared at Kuwabara and he started to turn red.

"I mean, uh…" he said nervously.

"Just shut-up," Hiei said to him. "You," he said to his wife. "Answer me. Why do we have a son?"

"Hiei, are you feeling alright?" she asked. "You've been acting very strangely today…"

"Maybe you should have an early night," Yukina suggested to him. "Mon-Mon can stay here tonight. You two go home and get some sleep."

Hiei turned to his wife to gauge her reaction to his sister's suggestion. She took on that slightly frightening smile again and he started to think that sleep was the last thing on her mind that night. He was not tired, but he was also not about to let her tie him up and have her way with him again.

But thinking about what she had done earlier made him slightly aroused, yet another clue that he needed to get back to his own reality, he decided.

* * *

Hiei woke up the next morning and immediately two thoughts entered his mind and had him panicking: first of all, he was still in the messed up reality, and second of all he was completely naked and tangled up in the equally naked body of that human woman. In the few short minutes that he lay awake before she too woke up, Hiei silently wondered what the laws were with regard to rape, because he was almost certain that she had forced herself on him the night before. He supposed that he could easily have thrown her clean out of the house with one hand, but he had let her put her hands all over him and then mount him like she had the right to. It was humiliating to think of, mostly because he had actually enjoyed it. Especially the third time around.

As the woman started to wake up Hiei closed his eyes, a particularly shameful thought entering his mind: when she had finally stopped the night before, when she had finally laid down and closed her eyes, he had done something completely irrational, something that he could barely believe and he hoped that she had forgotten about.

"Hiei," she mumbled, leaning over and kissing him on the cheek. "It's so nice to wake up with you still here."

"Am I not normally still here when you wake up?" he asked.

"No," she replied sleepily. "Usually you're out training or you've gone back to demon world."

At least that sounded a little more like him.

"But since you are here I suppose we could carry on where we left off last night."

Hiei tensed. Apparently she did remember what he had done the night before. He had been blinded by lust, he told himself, and it meant nothing. He had no way of knowing that she was intending to stop after three times. Grabbing her and trying to lure her into a fourth time was just a lapse in judgement on his part.

"But first let's see how your wound is," she said.

Hiei lay still and let her remove the dressings she had put on his mid-section.

"Well it's dry, but it's still not healed," she said. "That's strange, usually you would have healed something like that after a night's sleep."

"I didn't get much sleep last night," he said irritably.

"Now whose fault was that?" she asked, smiling up at him in a mocking way.

"Yours!" he snapped. "You wouldn't stop riding me!"

"I didn't hear you complaining last night, Hiei," she said with a sigh. "In fact, all I can remember was you begging for more…"

"I wasn't begging! I've never begged for anything in my life! And I never would!"

"I know, I was just teasing. I'll go and run a bath for you."

"A what?"

"I'll go and run a bath for you."

"A what?"

The woman laughed and got out of the bed, apparently not caring that she was still completely naked, and with the room flooded with daylight he could see absolutely every detail of her. She left the room in that state and Hiei started to panic again. What the hell was a bath? And how did she run one?

And why had he stayed with her the night before?

He needed to find a way back to his own reality, but that was not going to happen as long as he stayed with this human woman. Only Mukuro could get him out of this mess or possibly Kurama. Mukuro had said that she knew of the technique she had used to send him to this alternate dimension, so he supposed that if he could force her to perfect it in this universe she would be able to use it on him and send him back to where he belonged: back to a life where he lived in demon world, he did not have a human wife or a child, where Kurama was Youko Kurama and the general of an army, where Yusuke was living in demon world, where there was a Kakai Barrier around demon world, where Yukina was back in the ice village and far away from that idiot Kuwabara, where Hiei had no idea what had ever become of Kuwabara and he did not care.

A reality where he never saw any of the people he was suddenly surrounded by.

Hiei looked down at the wound on his stomach. It was surprisingly persistent. It was not in any way painful, but it was a discomfort he could do without. It was like a visual mocking reminder of the circumstances he found himself in. He was going to make Mukuro pay for what she had done to him.

"Hiei!"

Hiei was on his feet and at the doorway before it occurred to him that he was obeying the call of a human. He decided that, until he did find a way back to his own reality, he ought to just continue pretending that he belonged in the one he found himself in. It would only make things more difficult if he told everyone how he really felt, so he suppressed his urges and followed the sound of the woman's voice, finding her in a room with a large round pot that she had half-filled with hot water. She stepped into it and beckoned him to follow her.

"Come on, I'll scrub your back," she said, winking at him.

Apparently this was a bath, he concluded, and this was how humans got clean.

"I usually just take a dip in a river," he told her.

"I know you do," she replied, still smiling. "But when you're at home you have the luxury of hot water and shampoo, so get in."

Hiei stepped into the bath in front of her and she put her hands on his shoulders, turning him to face away from her. She sat down behind him and encouraged him to sit in front of her, which he did reluctantly, because not only was the water much hotter than he was accustomed to but his naturally untrusting nature did not like the idea of having her behind his back where he could not readily see her. Once he was down she slid her arms around his chest and started pulling him back. He allowed her to do what she was trying to, mainly to find out what her intentions were, and found his back against her body and her legs wrapping around his hips. He stayed tense and silent, mainly because he could feel every detail of her body against his back, including the slight protruding curve of her belly, once more reminding him that she was carrying his child – his second child, no less.

He wanted to ask her why. Why were they married? How had it come about? Why did he look so happy in their wedding photograph? Had it been his idea? She had at least told him that the human wedding ceremony had been her idea, but he had looked quite pleased to go along with it. How had a human ever managed to get this close to him? He hated humans. The whole thing seemed beyond impossible, and mostly because she seemed to know him as he was. If he had visited a reality where he was a human-loving fool like Kurama he might have understood that his life would have gone in this direction, but in this reality he was exactly the same person.

"Do I usually let you do this to me?" he asked as she began rubbing something heavily scented into his skin.

"No," she giggled. "But I really like it when you do."

She softly kissed the back of his neck but he felt no more reassured.

"How did Yukina find out that I'm her brother?" he asked.

"You told her yourself, Hiei!" she replied. "Oh dear, are you still feeling unwell? Even after a night's sleep?"

"Why did I tell her?" Hiei asked, ignoring her concern. "I never wanted to tell her."

"…Do you regret telling her? It's been years, Hiei, surely you don't regret it now, after all this time?"

Hiei tried to think of a more subtle way to continue questioning the woman – though it was quite difficult for him, since he had never cared for diplomacy.

"I told her before the wedding," he said, repeating what Mukuro had told him the day before.

He was slightly surprised that he had managed to remember those words, as he had been quite panicked at that point.

"Yes," his wife agreed. "You never said why, but I think it was just the sense of family you were feeling at the time. You never regretted it before, but you did have second thoughts about living here for a long time… Do you regret choosing to live here?"

Hiei had no idea if he regretted it or not. He had always lived by the mantra of "no mistakes, no regrets", so he supposed that it was impossible for him to regret telling Yukina the truth or choosing to life in a tree-house in the living world with a human wife: though both things sounded like hell to him.

"I don't regret anything," he eventually said, reasoning that it was true of his own life and probably the answer the him from this dimension would have given.

"Neither do I, Hiei," she said. "You always said you never make mistakes and you never regret anything, and I'm like that too. We don't have much in common, but that's something we both live by."

"We have a son together," Hiei pointed out. "That's something we have in common."

She made a strange noise and hugged him. Apparently what he had just said had pleased her, though he could not understand why, since he had just been trying to correct her.

"Do I spend a lot of my time in demon world?" he asked.

She loosened her hold and went back to washing his back.

"Yes, but I understand why," she replied. "You're Mukuro's partner, after all."

"I thought I was your partner?" he said.

She giggled slightly, though he could not understand what she thought was funny.

"I mean you're Mukuro's business partner," she explained. "And you'll take over from her one day as ruler of her share of demon world."

"She still rules her share of demon world?" Hiei echoed.

"Yes, of course," she replied. "Oh Hiei, you're really not yourself at all!"

"If Mukuro still rules her share of demon world, what about the other two thirds?" he asked, ignoring her response.

"Yomi still rules his share and Yusuke still looks after his share," she replied. "Did you forget that too?"

"But Yusuke lives here in the living world?"

"He lives here five days a week. He goes to demon world for two days in the middle of every week, when he's not working. He lets his council of advisors do most of the work, he just goes to check on things and oversee any major decisions. I thought you already knew that, Hiei?"

"So demon world is divided again in this universe too…"

"Hiei, are you sure you're alright?"

"Something's different. I just need to figure out what it is."

"…Okay… Close your eyes."

"What?"

Hiei grunted as the woman suddenly poured water over his head, drenching his hair. He decided not to snap at her, since she had warned him to close his eyes beforehand. He instead let her continue her actions for some time, taking the opportunity to think over what he had learned about this strange reality. He was vaguely aware that he might end up stuck where he was, and so he would need to adapt to the rules of this life. If he was to be stuck there permanently, the first thing he intended to do was to move back to demon world permanently. His human wife and the children be damned, he was not going to live the rest of his life in a tree-house in the living world pretending that he was proud to have impregnated a human woman – twice. There was no war in demon world, even though it was still divided, there was no Kakai Barrier and apparently nobody cared that he was moving between territories in demon world or that he was in the living world, so in this world he had not been banned from doing so by Koenma.

"When was the last time I saw Koenma?" he asked.

The woman behind him burst out laughing as though he had just told her the funniest joke imaginable.

"Oh, probably about eight years ago, when we both got banned from going to spirit world!" she laughed.

"We got banned from spirit world?" he echoed. "You as well?"

"Well, I wasn't banned," she replied. "But I did say that I wouldn't go back until my trial was over."

"Your trial?"

"It's only another two years now, Hiei. After that we won't have to live like this any more. We can all move to demon world – you, me, Monzan and our baby."

"…You want to live in demon world?"

"Of course I do! We're going to live in Mukuro's territory, because one day you'll rule over it."

Hiei felt even more confused than before.

"When I was banned from spirit world," he began slowly. "Why wasn't I banned from the living world too?"

"Because if you had been, I would have fought King Enma himself to have that decision overturned!" she replied, sounding surprisingly adamant in her conviction. "You didn't care about being banned from spirit world, but if you had been banned from living world we couldn't have been together and you wouldn't have been able to visit Yukina any more."

"…Right…"

Hiei stopped again, partly because he was starting to think that, for every question that he had answered, he thought of seven more, which was only making his situation more confusing. He stayed silent for several minutes more, gradually becoming aware of just how gentle the woman's hands were. Her touches were so loving he almost felt scared of her. He had never imagined a demon woman loving him that much, so how a human woman had come to love and trust him was simply impossible to imagine.

"You touch me as though you love every part of me," he said.

"I do love every part of you, Hiei," she whispered into his ear.

"Have you always felt that way?" he asked.

"Of course not!" she replied, laughing slightly again. "I was always scared of you, but I trusted you and I even liked you. I always thought that you were so brave and strong and noble…"

Hiei froze. A strange sense of déjà vu was creeping over him, to the point that he truly believed that he was reliving a moment of his life.

"I still can't believe I was so wrong about you," she added. "But that time we spent in the cave… And then what you did afterwards… You just… I thought I knew your heart. I never thought I could be so wrong about someone. But you definitely proved me wrong."

Hiei closed his eyes tightly. He had definitely heard those words somewhere before, and he even felt that they had been spoken by her voice the last time he had heard them; but, try as he might, he could not make sense of it.

"Let's go for a walk after this," she said to him. "Let's go into town and have lunch somewhere. Just something small, Yukina will probably make a banquet for us tonight, especially now that she knows you're coming too."

Hiei found himself agreeing with her, mainly because he lacked the energy and the will to argue the point. He was just trying to find a way out, he told himself, and acting strangely meant nothing. Nothing he did or said in this reality would have any real consequences since this was not his reality, so it did not matter.

* * *

Hiei and his wife were last to arrive at the temple that night. They had spent most of the day just walking about with her talking a lot about all sorts of things, most of which Hiei did not bother listening to. Some of it interested him – like when she had spoken about how strong their son was and that he was capable of taking Kuwabara off his feet with one kick – but most of it had been inconsequential shit that he had simply blocked out. They had gone back home after seeing Kuwabara driving in that direction with their son – apparently the child went somewhere in the city during the day, which was something that all human children did – and his wife had told him that they would collect the boy from Kuwabara when they got back. Instead they had gone straight to the tree-house and she had forced herself on him again. Twice.

"Hiei!"

Hiei jerked involuntarily as he suddenly found himself face-to-face with Yusuke Urameshi. He had not seen Yusuke in over ten years, and suddenly seeing him again was quite a strange experience. He had heard that Yusuke had, since moving permanently to demon world, grown to look much like Raizen once more, with long silver hair and body markings: but in this reality he still looked like the punk kid with the greased hair.

"I feel really honoured!" he said, grinning brightly. "Hiei's here!"

"Stop it, Yusuke," Hiei's wife said.

Yusuke turned to her, eying her over before grinning that insolent grin he always wore when he was about to say something cheeky – a look that Hiei had almost forgotten over the years.

"I get it now!" he said. "Couldn't stay away, huh Hiei?"

He poked a finger at Hiei's shoulder, which, even coming from Yusuke, was irritating for Hiei.

"You randy son of a bitch, Hiei!" he added.

"Shut-up," Hiei snapped, slapping his hand aside.

"Oh, you wanna fight?" Yusuke responded, pulling off his coat.

"Yusuke!" Hiei's wife snapped. "We're having a meal, this isn't the time for fighting!"

"There's always time for fighting," Yusuke replied. "And besides, Hiei's the only one left who can stand up to me."

Yusuke raised his fists but another human woman stepped in front of him.

"Stop it, Yusuke!" she said.

She looked a little bit like that woman Yusuke had once been in love with. She was older, which was only to be expected after ten years, but she seemed the same otherwise. Hiei looked around and saw that, in this reality, they were all still together. Yusuke, Kurama, Kuwabara and Yukina were still there, Yusuke's woman, Kuwabara's sister and even that human woman Kurama worked with were there.

"Open hands," Yusuke said, opening out his hands. "No closed fists. What do you say, Hiei?"

Hiei, who was still looking about the others curiously, did not realise what Yusuke was trying to do until it had happened. The others all gasped as Yusuke's palm slapped noisily against the side of Hiei's face.

"You didn't even try to dodge that!" Yusuke said.

"I'll kill you!" a voice cried out.

Hiei's eyes almost popped out of his head as he saw his own son charging at Yusuke, his anger literally glowing around him.

"Hey, that's not fair, I'm not fighting the kid!" Yusuke said hurriedly.

"Whoa there, big guy!" Hiei's wife said, grabbing the boy before he could reach Yusuke.

She was not strong enough to stop him but the child chose to stop at her touch. He continued to glare at Yusuke in a way that made him look worryingly like Hiei knew he had at that age.

"You!" Hiei said, pointing a finger at Yusuke. "If it's a fight you want, let's go outside!"

"Alright!" Yusuke said cheerfully.

Hiei was a little surprised that Yusuke ran out ahead of him, though he supposed that Yusuke had always enjoyed fighting, so it was probably only to be expected. He followed him outside, a strange feeling passing over him again as he took his position in front of Yusuke.

"I'll go easy on you," Yusuke told him. "Since you're still recovering from getting your ass kicked by Mukuro."

Hiei's face dropped. Yusuke slapped him again and any thoughts of the oddness of once more sparring with Yusuke after so long left him. He flew at Yusuke, who actually looked delighted by his actions, and he began punching at him. Yusuke kept up with him, blocking every blow, but making no attempt to fight back. Hiei was silently quite impressed that Yusuke was still so fast, considering that he had chosen to stay in the human world in this reality. Hiei had spent the last ten years fighting solidly, and apparently Yusuke had not had that advantage of training, but still he was able to keep pace with Hiei.

Hiei could count the number of times he had fought Yusuke on one hand. It was something they had often spoken about but rarely done. Fighting Yusuke was different from fighting an enemy or even from sparring with one of Mukuro's soldiers. There was no desperate need for survival, no pressure of being judged, so risk of losing a limb or being demoted. It was just fighting for the joy of the challenge.

Hiei could not remember the last time he had enjoyed anything. He tried to think harder about it, and he realised that the last time he had come close to feeling as satisfied as he did right then was when he had been on his last pointless mission for spirit world – the one where Koenma had interfered after ownership of demon world had been divided and one S Class demon had protested and started causing havoc. Hiei had hated his involvement in that mess, but as he reflected back, he realised that it had been the last time that he had actually been happy.

It had been the last time he had ever seen or spoken to Yusuke or Kurama.

Hiei was not really surprised that Yusuke suddenly managed to punch him square in the jaw, knocking him back three steps. He had allowed himself to get distracted, but the blow suddenly cleared his mind and he leapt at Yusuke.

And suddenly everything went silent.

It took Hiei several seconds to realise what he was doing, and several more to realise that he had actually meant to do it. Hiei had never been one for physical contact that was not born from aggression, but apparently something had changed in the last two days, because, after touching Kurama's shoulder the day before and letting that human woman have her way with him over and over, he was now hugging Yusuke.

"H-Hiei?" Yusuke said.

Yusuke was not hugging him back. He was standing quite stiffly, with his arms at his sides, in much the same way Hiei himself probably would have done if someone had randomly hugged him in the middle of a fight. Hiei still did not even know why he had done it, or why he could not let go. He had never hugged anything in his entire life – and even in this reality he apparently did not even hug his own son – so what had come over him?

With a great effort Hiei pulled his arms from around Yusuke's shoulders and staggered back a few steps. Yusuke was glaring at him in a mixture of horror and confusion, and a glance to his left told him that everyone else who had been inside the temple was now outside watching, looking every bit as confused and shocked as Yusuke did.

"Wow," Yusuke said, slowly finding his smile again. "Aw, have you missed me?"

He walked over to Hiei and put his arms around his shoulders and tried to kiss him on the cheek, but Hiei quickly leaned away from him.

"Did you miss me, little guy?" he asked.

"Get the fuck off of me!" Hiei snapped, ducking out of his reach and staggering away from him again.

"I think you missed me!" Yusuke sang at him.

Hiei paused, once more taken over by a strange sense of clarity.

"I did miss you," he said numbly. "Fuck, all this time…"

Yusuke's smile vanished for a moment but he quickly recovered it.

"Aw, you don't see me for a few weeks, and it's like a lover's reunion!" he said.

"You're an insolent, shameless, thoughtless, irrational fool," Hiei spat at him.

"I missed you too, diddums," Yusuke replied, making a kissy face at him.

Hiei did not answer him. He could not answer him. He had actually hugged Yusuke and he had meant to do it. He had not realised how much he missed him until that moment. He slowly looked over at the others, looking around their faces again. It was that same feeling he had felt when he had been trying to talk to Kurama the day before: he had not realised just how much he missed having friends until he had lost them.

And they really were his friends.

"Come on, let's go inside, I'm starving!" Yusuke said to him.

Hiei numbly followed him back inside, all the while fighting two conflicting thoughts in his mind: he had to get back to his own reality, but it was possible that this reality was better than the one he had come from.

"You're a big softy really," his wife said as he joined her by the door.

She touched her thumb to one corner of his mouth, clearing away the small amount of blood there from the blow he had taken from Yusuke. She kissed his cheek and hooked her arm through his, leading him back inside. He walked with her, watching the others as they gathered at a dinner table. Kuwabara was holding Monzan up in the air and it was arguable which of the two looked and sounded more like an excited child; Yukina was placing out huge servings of food with the help of Yusuke's woman and she looked happier than Hiei had ever seen her look; Yusuke and Kuwabara's sister were discussing a bottle of sake and telling the sort of crude jokes Hiei had only ever heard come from humans; Kurama was showing his woman a trick involving a piece of bamboo and she was delighted but not shocked by it, proving that she knew exactly what he was; and Hiei was standing watching it all with his pregnant wife holding onto his arm.

* * *

After surviving a dinner where everyone had been talking almost simultaneously about different things and laughing far too much, Hiei found himself in another room, where Kuwabara was trying to convince everyone that karaoke was a good idea, Yusuke wanted to play card games for money and Yukina was amusing Monzan with a purple dragon sock puppet – which was slightly embarrassing to watch, as Hiei had hoped that his son was more intelligent than to be so easily amused, but he blamed it on the boy's human genes.

"Isn't this just lovely?" his wife said suddenly. "Having everyone all together again like this?"

"I always feel a bit awkward when you guys are all together like this," Kurama's woman said. "Just because, you know, I was never around when you were having all your adventures together."

"Oh don't be silly, Maya!" Hiei's wife insisted.

"Yeah, it's great having someone who wasn't there," Kuwabara's sister said. "Because now we can all retell our shared stories differently and argue over them and you can laugh at us objectively."

"I always tell it exactly like it happened, Shizuru!" Kuwabara complained.

"Oh yeah?" Yusuke snorted. "Go on then: tell us what happened in Maze Castle when we fought the Four Saint Beasts."

"I destroyed Byakko!" Kuwabara replied.

"No, you barely managed to shove him into the lava," Yusuke corrected him. "And then Seiryu killed him right before he fought Hiei."

Hiei frowned slightly. That was exactly how he remembered that mission too. Apparently up until that point, this universe was the same as the one he had come from.

"Kuwabara always embellishes his retellings of our adventures," Kurama said. "But I do rather enjoy hearing his version of events. They are always so much more… Creative…"

"Shut-up, fox boy!" Kuwabara snapped.

"Tell us some more stories, Kuwabara," Hiei said.

The others all gave him funny looks but he ignored them. Maybe if he could keep the big idiot talking, he might be able to figure out when and how this universe had diverged from the one he had come from.

"Well, after we beat the Four Saint Beasts, I beat the Toguro brothers and rescued Yukina from Tarukane," he replied.

"Wrong!" Yusuke yelled. "Me and you fought the Toguros together and they faked losing, and Hiei kicked the crap out of Tarukane to get Yukina away from him!"

"I was so worried that day!" Hiei's wife suddenly said. "I was so sure that you would kill Tarukane, Hiei," she said to him. "I was worried Yusuke and I would have to arrest you for killing a human."

Hiei frowned but said nothing. Why was she speaking about the event as though she had been there? Was that what the difference was? Was it her?

"And of course then the Toguros forced us to enter the Dark Tournament," Kurama said.

"Where we fought so many freaks it was unreal," Yusuke added.

"And I was the only one who was at every fight!" Kuwabara said.

"No you…" Yusuke began. "Oh, yeah, maybe that part is true. I missed one getting Genkai's spirit orb, Kurama and Hiei missed one when that Doctor Itchigaki stopped them getting to the arena and Genkai wasn't there for the final round… Hey, Kuwabara, that's one story you didn't have to lie about!"

"Shut-up, Urameshi!" Kuwabara shot back.

"And then we fought Sensui," Yusuke continued.

"After being tricked by Genkai in the old mansion," Kurama added.

"You weren't tricked," Yusuke pointed out. "They caught me out but not you."

"Yeah, they cheated when they got me," Kuwabara said. "I said "each other" and that counted as me saying "hot". The rules of that game weren't clear, it wasn't fair!"

"But Hiei and Botan don't have any excuse," Yusuke said. "They both just said hot. Hiei because he's impatient and thought he wouldn't get caught and Botan because she's such a ditz."

"I resent that, Yusuke!" Hiei's wife snapped back.

Hiei flinched. The word "botan" sounded familiar somehow. And his wife had been in that mansion with them? He definitely did not remember that. He remembered being forced to go there to rescue Yusuke, and there had only been four of them there: himself, Kurama, Kuwabara and a ferry girl from spirit world.

"And then we went to demon world for the demon world tournament," Yusuke continued.

"Which Enki won," Kurama added.

"And then Enki died," Hiei said, hoping to hurry the conversation along.

"Yeah, and Kokou was offered his job, but she refused," Yusuke said.

"So they divided demon world, and then we had our last mission together," Kurama said.

"The mission to capture that one bastard who thought he should be made ruler of demon world because he was a finalist in the demon world tournament?" Hiei asked.

"Exactly!" Yusuke said. "And that's pretty much it, Maya. We've all stayed in touch ever since, but we never work for spirit world any more."

"Mostly because Koenma doesn't really speak to us any more," Kuwabara muttered.

"I don't know why you're complaining, Kuwabara!" Hiei's wife said. "You're free to live your life now!"

"We all stayed in touch after that last mission?" Hiei asked.

The others all gave him odd looks again but he did not care. That was not what had happened in his universe, after all, and he had to find out why.

"Of course we did!" Yusuke said, as though it should have been obvious.

"That was my favourite of all of our missions," Hiei's wife said with a sigh. "But everyone knows why, of course."

"I don't," Hiei said flatly.

Everyone laughed as though he had said something incredibly funny.

"Tell us the story about the cave again, Botan!" Yusuke's woman said.

"I don't want to embarrass Hiei," Hiei's wife replied.

"I'm not embarrassed," he snorted. "Tell your story. But first tell me why you were there."

She smiled and Yusuke laughed nervously.

"My bad!" he said.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I chose to go to demon world and help out. Koenma didn't want us to get involved, but I insisted. And then yes, Yusuke did ask me to follow you, Hiei."

Hiei felt another sickening moment of clarity strike him: someone had followed him that day on that last mission.

"To the mountain village…" he said, more to himself than her.

"Yes, where you caused so much trouble, they summoned an ancient rock monster to deal with you!" she said.

"…Yes, that's right…"

Hiei felt that he was getting close. Everything to the point of the appearance of that rock monster was the same in his reality and this one. Whatever had happened to create the reality he was now in must have happened shortly after that moment because he was suddenly remembering that day in far more detail than he had before: the rock monster had chased him, he had fled, it had caught the ferry girl that had been following him and killed her, and when he had returned to the others and told them as much they had disowned him. In fact, he had been taken to spirit world and Koenma had tried to make him apologise to the ferry girl, and when he had refused, he had been banned from spirit world and the living world, and Yusuke and Kurama had banned him from two thirds of demon world.

"I love this story!" Yukina said suddenly. "It's so romantic!"

"Romantic?" Hiei echoed.

"It was very gallant of you," his wife replied. "I can still remember the moment that rock monster caught me – I thought I was dead for sure. I called out to you and you stopped, but you didn't look like you would come back. I was actually sure that you would run off and leave me to die. I was in my human body, so it was doubly painful and scary. But I called out to you again and you came back so fast. Oh Hiei, you almost died saving me that day."

"…Saving you…?"

"Saving you was the right thing to do," Kuwabara said. "Only a complete bastard would have let that monster eat a non-fighter ferry girl like you, Botan."

"Yeah, I would have killed you myself if you'd let Botan die, Hiei," Yusuke added.

"You all give Hiei far too little credit," Kurama said sternly. "He is a man of honour. He never would have let an innocent like Botan suffer so painfully and terribly, and you should be ashamed of yourselves for even thinking that he might have."

Hiei closed his eyes. That was the difference? He saved the ferry girl? Just that one, small thing?

"What about the war?" he asked suddenly, opening his eyes again.

"What war?" Yusuke asked.

"The war," Hiei insisted. "In demon world?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," Yusuke said. "But that wasn't a mission we did together or for spirit world. That was just a misunderstanding after we killed that demon who was complaining about the division of demon world. That diplomat from Mukuro's camp – Hitoshi – sorted it all out, remember? He gave that speech about the three parts of demon world complimenting each other better if they stayed separate but traded with each other and stuff. That guy really changed everything – I know you hate him because he keeps calling you a human sympathiser, but the guy really saved all our asses from a major disaster."

"I should have killed him," Hiei said, hoping to find out why he had not done so in this universe.

"You don't care that he calls you a human sympathiser," his wife said. "Because I had to take a human body so that we could be together, and you don't care what people say, as long as we're together."

She kissed him on the cheek and he let her do it, mostly because he was starting to feel confused again.

"Do you ever miss being a ferry girl, Botan?" Yukina asked her.

"No. Giving it up and taking this trial, going against Koenma and spirit world was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but I'm always glad that I did. Just like Hiei, I've never made any mistakes and I have no regrets."

Hiei felt sick. Suddenly everything had fallen into place in his mind: the difference in this universe was only that he had saved that ferry girl. He had saved her, and then she had become a human and he had married her, and because he had married her, he no longer cared that Hitoshi always called him a human sympathiser, and so he had not killed the ambassador, and so war in demon world had been averted. And because there had never been a war, the Kakai Barrier had never been rebuilt, Yukina had never been made to go back to the ice village, Yusuke and Kurama were free to pass between demon world and the living world rather than having been forced to stay in demon world and oppose each other as army generals, and everyone still talked to Hiei and he was not restricted to Mukuro's territory because he had saved the ferry girl from the rock monster.

"Fuck," he muttered aloud.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Kurama sees through Hiei and explains a few of the gaps between the two realities, Hiei's opinion of Botan starts to change when he finds out more about how and why they got together and he starts to realise that the alternate reality is actually not so bad as he had first thought. **Chapter 4 – Magic and Heroic**


	4. Magic and Heroic

**A/N:** I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho or any of the characters herein, they are all the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. Except Hitoshi the ambassador/diplomat. And Monzan the sprog!

 **Recap:** Hiei was reunited with the old team – or at least, the alternate version of the old team – where he realised how much he had missed Yusuke and how much happier and better off everyone else around him was in this reality. Also he finally realised that the woman he is married to is Botan the ferry girl he let the rock monster kill, and that the only difference between this reality and his own was that in this reality he chose to save her life.

* * *

 **Chapter 4: Magic and Heroic**

Hiei sat on the roof of the old lady's temple, relieved to have finally got some time alone. He was still reeling from what he had learned. This entire, warped reality had come about because, in that brief instant in time where he had been faced with the choice of running away or going back and saving the life of a ferry girl, he had chosen to go back. It seemed almost comical to him that so much could be different from such a minor change in history. By saving the ferry girl – Botan, was her name, apparently – he had somehow decided to take her as his wife, for which she had taken a human body and defied spirit world, and in his complete love for her, he had given up caring when Hitoshi called him a human sympathiser, and so he had not killed the ambassador, and the war in demon world had never happened.

And, above all, because he had saved and married Botan, Yusuke and Kurama were still his friends and Yukina had not been sent back to the ice village and she was blissfully happy.

Being married to a human woman – and one that had been a ferry girl, no less – had seemed like hell to Hiei, but now he was starting to wonder if that was incredibly selfish of him. In this reality his own life was maybe a joke, but everyone else around him was happier and better off. Kurama was still Shuichi, Yusuke was still living mostly as a human, there was no Kakai Barrier and Yukina was so, so happy.

And seeing and speaking to Yusuke and Kurama again was actually quite nice. It was almost the same feeling as the feeling he got when he looked at his hirui stone: a sense of peace that was very welcome.

Hiei still did not know if he was stuck in this reality or not, but he was starting to think that maybe he could survive it if he was. Maybe having Botan as his wife and mother of his children was not so bad after all. She had said something to him about them all going to live in demon world soon, and that would make things much better for him. He would be back in demon world, with a family, and he would still have his friends, and his position as Mukuro's heir was more secure in this reality, because in this reality he was not banned from visiting Yomi or Yusuke's territory – because in this reality he had not pissed Yusuke and Kurama off by letting Botan die.

"Hiei."

Hiei looked up, annoyed that his solitude had been disturbed but at the same time so pleased to see Kurama he could feel himself smiling slightly.

"I wanted to talk to you alone," Kurama said quietly, sitting down at his side. "I've been thinking a lot about what you said yesterday, and I can see that today, things are no different: you're not actually Hiei, are you?"

Hiei tensed and stared at him with wide eyes of disbelief.

"Like you said yourself, I am a clever bastard, and I can tell that you're not the same Hiei who came to my shop last week to talk to me about his concerns regarding his wife carrying another son," Kurama continued. "I'm not really sure what has happened, but it's like you are Hiei, but you're not the same Hiei that we know. And you seem genuinely confused by everything around you. So who are you and what are you doing here? And where's our Hiei?"

"I don't know," Hiei sighed. "And how the hell did you know what was going on?"

"I'm right?" Kurama asked.

"Damn you, yes you are!" Hiei said. "I was… Mukuro used a new move called "Dividing Realities" on me. She said it was something about making an alternate reality, but she never explained exactly what it did."

Hiei pulled up his shirt and pointed to the still healing cross on his stomach.

"She hit me here, and somehow it took me to this reality, where everything is completely different," he said. "I don't know how to get back. And I don't know what happened to the me from this reality. Maybe he's gone to my reality."

"I see," Kurama said, nodding slowly. "So how are things different in your reality?"

"That's it?" Hiei echoed. "You're just accepting it? Just like that?"

"Hiei, you're clearly not the same Hiei I've known these last few years," Kurama replied. "Right now I would accept just about any explanation you gave. You're more like the person you were when I first met you."

"I've evolved past that!" Hiei snapped. "I'm not that weak any more!"

"You are physically stronger, but so was the Hiei I knew last week. But mentally, you've gone back to that way of life. The Hiei I knew in this time had undergone a massive, though gradual, change, which had mostly stemmed from the day he rescued Botan from the rock monster."

"I didn't rescue Botan from the rock monster. That's the difference. That's the only difference. I let her die and made my escape. When I got back, you, Yusuke and Kuwabara all told me you hated me for letting her die, and Koenma took me to spirit world and tried to make me apologise to her. I refused, and he banned me from spirit world and the living world."

"If you had let Botan die that day, I would have made it so that you were also banned from Yomi's territory."

"You did. And Yusuke banned me from his territory, and Mukuro upheld that promise, even though demon world is now at war."

"Demon world is at war?"

"Mukuro hired a new advisor and he said some stupid things and it started a war."

"What happened to Hitoshi? He famously ended all the quarrels in demon world."

"I killed him."

Kurama glared at Hiei and Hiei quickly shook his head.

"You don't understand!" he said. "He called me a human sympathiser! In front of many of Mukuro's top soldiers!"

"I see…" Kurama said quietly. "So in your universe you're a heartless, selfish, arrogant bastard, whereas in our universe you are an honourable, reliable, loyal friend."

Hiei stiffened, his eyes growing large and the desire to punch Kurama growing exponentially within him.

"Well, that being said, I'm sure you'll appreciate what I'm about to say next: you have to go back to wherever you came from and give us back our Hiei," Kurama added.

"That's what I'm trying to do, but I don't know how!" Hiei snapped. "Mukuro doesn't know the attack in this reality! I'm stuck here!"

"Perhaps if we killed you the Hiei from this dimension would return."

"You're not serious?"

Hiei almost made a squeaky noise of sheer horror: the flat look on Kurama's face told him quite clearly that he was serious.

"Our Hiei saved Botan," Kurama explained. "You chose to kill her. Our Hiei loves Botan. Obviously you hate her. If you stay here, you'll have to live as her husband and the father of her children. I don't think that's fair on either of you."

"I agree," Hiei said. "So what do I have to do to get back to my own life?"

"I don't know."

"What? But you're supposed to know everything!"

Kurama gave a small, sarcastic laugh.

"Are we still friends?" he asked.

"No," Hiei replied. "You're the general of Yomi's army and Yusuke is the general of his own army. You're fighting against each other and Mukuro's army."

"I live in demon world in your reality?"

"Yes. So does Yusuke. Neither of you can come back to the living world because the Kakai Barrier is back up."

"Why is the Kakai Barrier back up? Because of the war?"

"Yes."

"The war that you basically are to blame for."

"…That's a very warped way of looking at it. I wasn't the one who said those stupid things, it was Mukuro's new advisor!"

"Hitoshi was meant to live to stop that war, but you killed him."

Hiei found that he could not think of a decent counter-argument. It seemed like everything had gone wrong because he had not saved and married Botan in his own reality. Maybe, he thought, when he did get back to his own reality, he would have to find her and marry her. Maybe that would put everything right again.

"I never wanted to marry Botan," he said, mostly to himself.

"No, you never did," Kurama agreed. "Until after our last mission for spirit world. After you saved her from the rock monster, you were mortally wounded, and with the monster and a horde of angry villagers wanting your blood, Botan was forced to take you into a cave to hide and try to heal you. The two of you were stuck there for almost two weeks before we found you, and you were so badly burned by acid, you had lost most of your hair and you had more scars than Mukuro."

Hiei tensed. He had not thought that he might look any different in this reality and as such had not bothered to check his own reflection or appearance.

"You had that fixed, of course," Kurama continued, as though sensing his confusion. "Not out of vanity as such. You lived with the scars for several months, but during that time you actively pursued Botan. You followed her everywhere. You said that when you were in that cave, the things she did for you made you realise that you wanted to be with her forever. She didn't love you, so she tried to avoid you and she turned you down any time you asked her to spend some time with you. Eventually you had your scars fully healed because you thought she was repulsed by your appearance, and that made her angry that you thought she was so shallow."

"…Does this story have a point?" Hiei asked impatiently.

"Yes," Kurama replied. "You worked very hard to prove your affections to Botan, and even when she did finally start to return your feelings, she was too scared to defy spirit world. Eventually she did. She told Koenma that she no longer wanted to be a ferry girl, that she wanted to be free to be with you. He was furious, and she had to fight with all she had for her freedom. Koenma banned you from spirit world for seducing his favourite ferry girl, and only after months of fighting did he eventually agree that Botan would be granted a physical presence as a spirit, allowing her to live as long as you will and as your partner. But in order to gain that privilege, she was told she had to survive a trial: ten years as a human, living in the human world. So she came here, moved into the temple here and started working as a fortune teller. You couldn't stand to see her living so poorly, so you had the tree-house built and you chose to live here too – though you spend most of your time in demon world still. Botan could only have children during this ten year period, in her human body, and that was something she had always wanted, but you were afraid that the strain of it would kill her. Her first pregnancy was a genuine accident, and we had to ask Mukuro to restrain you at the time of the birth because you were so irrational. But Monzan was born without incident, and although it worried you, you eventually agreed to have another child with Botan."

Hiei nodded.

"I can't imagine anyone defying spirit world for me," he said frankly. "Least of all a ferry girl."

"That's why it's unfair that you should stay here," Kurama told him. "The Hiei I know worked hard to win Botan's affections and was dedicated and loving towards her for a long time before she went to those extremes for him. You let Botan die, and you don't even seem to care about it."

"I didn't care about it!"

"Didn't?"

"No… Wait… What?"

"You used the past tense. Did you feel remorse afterwards?"

"Not exactly, but…"

Hiei's voice trailed off. He had never given Botan's death a second thought before Mukuro had sent him to this weird reality, but now he was starting to have an opinion on it. Botan was his wife, she was the mother of his children, and she had defied spirit world and Koenma himself just to be with him. Nobody had else had ever come close to caring for him that much, and he had never imagined that anyone would – but earlier when she had made him take a bath with her he could feel from the way she touched him that she did deeply care for him. In his own reality, he had let his wife die, and in doing so, he had killed his own children too. Monzan did not exist in his reality, and that was his fault.

"I have to go," he said, standing abruptly.

"Back to your own reality?" Kurama asked him.

"Something like that," Hiei lied.

He leapt off the roof and moved quickly back into the temple. He ignored everyone around him as they greeted him, though none of them seemed to care because apparently he was just as anti-social and rude in this reality as he was in his own. He quickly located Monzan, sat on the floor pushing a wooden block on wheels around in circles and he did something that apparently the Hiei of this reality was not supposed to – though he really did not care about that – and picked the boy up.

"Hiei!" Botan cried.

"Come on, we're going home," he told her.

He was not really sure how he was meant to carry the kid, but apparently his son was so happy to have been picked up by his father that Hiei did not have to do too much, since the boy grabbed his arms around his neck and clung onto him. Hiei hooked one arm under Monzan's legs to hold him in place and walked over to Botan, grabbing her hand with his other hand. She quickly got to her feet and hurried along at his side, looking torn between shock and delight.

"H-Hiei, are you alright?" she asked as they neared the door.

"Fine," he replied. "Never better, actually."

"Okay…" she said quietly. "Do you want me to carry Monzan?"

"He's my son, I can carry him if I want to," Hiei snapped back.

Hiei was silently surprised at how irritated he had sounded, and even more amazed to find that he actually did feel quite infuriated that everyone thought he should not be carrying his own son.

Although carrying the boy was quite a strange experience. He was very warm – like a typical fire demon – and he smelt like milky pudding. He was apparently loving being held by Hiei because he was holding on quite fiercely and making small contented noises. It was a surreal experience, but when he thought about having never held the boy Hiei was reminded of those bitches from the ice village who had cast him out and the father that he had never known – he had often wondered if he had been born out of rape, since he had never found any evidence of his mother ever having had a relationship with a man. He had never wanted children, because he had known that he could not have given a child the things they needed, the things he himself had never had growing up. But, now that fatherhood had been forced upon him, he was determined that he was not about to repeat the same mistakes his own weak-willed mother and hopeless, near-mythical father had. His sons would not be cast out and they would not be treated like monsters.

And anyone who thought otherwise would die.

Outside it was starting to rain and already growing dark, and the thought of going back to the tree-house and being in it with Botan and Monzan was strangely calming – like that feeling Hiei got when he looked at his teargem. It was that strange sense of peacefulness that he had never been able to find anywhere else, only from looking at the hiruiseki, from being with his friends and now from being with his wife and son. Maybe that meant something. Maybe it was the feeling of belonging. Mukuro had always told him that, after she had looked deep into his psyche, she had believed that the reason he continued to act aggressively and to fight was because he was still looking for something, and that something was to belong somewhere. Maybe she had been right: maybe he did just want to belong.

And maybe this was where he belonged: in the living world with his wife and son and his friends.

Well that was unexpected and severely fucked up.

"You go first," he said as he reached the rope ladder up to his house.

Botan nodded, releasing his hand and climbing up the ladder ahead of him. Monzan was still holding onto him tightly so he began following after her, careful not to bash the boy against the ladder as he climbed. After the first few steps he looked up, his attention wavering slightly as he realised that, climbing up after Botan, he was afforded a very explicit view up her dress.

"Do people visit us at this house?" he asked as they climbed.

"Sometimes, yes," Botan replied. "When you're not here."

"Do you walk up the ladder ahead of them?"

"I don't know. I suppose so."

"Well don't."

"O-okay…"

Hiei growled to himself at the thought of Yusuke and Kuwabara leering up at his wife's underwear. She had probably not thought of it herself, but the thought bothered Hiei far more than he thought it ever could.

Inside the house Botan beckoned Hiei to follow her through to a room that seemed to be very far from the bedroom she had taken him to the night before. There was no mistaking that the room she took him to was Monzan's room, as it was filled with toys and the bed in it was far too small for an adult.

"I'll put him to bed, you don't have to stay," Botan said, lifting Monzan from Hiei.

Hiei winced as Monzan balled his fists into his shirt and tried to hold on a little longer.

"Come on Monzan, I'll tell you a story," Botan said.

Monzan smiled and released Hiei at last.

"On you go," Botan said to him.

Hiei backed out of the room, unsure what to do. He eventually wandered off towards the strange outdoor part of the house, walking about it curiously. The rain was starting to get heavier, drumming against the wood of the house and the floor around him. A wind was picking up and the branches of the trees around him were swaying and creaking. He momentarily wondered about the security of an enormous, circular house that was supported only by struts attached to the trunks of several trees, but he supposed that the house had existed for many years in this way, and one night of rain and wind now would not suddenly threaten its structural integrity any.

There was an almost full moon in the sky, and black clouds were sweeping over it, spilling intermittent pools of blue light over everything around him. The sound of the wind and the rain and the unusual lighting was all unlike anything from demon world, and in fact unlike anything Hiei had ever even experienced in the living world, but it felt right somehow. Ignoring what lay beyond the walls of the tree-house, Hiei almost felt that he could call such a place his home.

Hiei wanted to stay in the alternate reality.

It was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. He was married to Botan, they had children, Yukina lived with Kuwabara and that was uncomfortably close to his house, Kurama was living as a human still and so was Yusuke, and Hiei himself was living in the living world. None of those things were right, and looking at each of them individually made him cringe: but somehow, when all of those things were suddenly thrown together as they had been in this reality, they all made perfect sense. Life in this reality was so easy. He was free to move between locations and between worlds, he could still see and speak to his friends, he was not constantly irritated about the war that he was not a part of and his hate and confusion about love and family was gone.

This was the life he was supposed to have lived. He was meant to have saved Botan that day. He was meant to have asked her to marry him and he was meant to have let Hitoshi live. He had just made that one small mistake, and in doing so, he had ruined everything for everyone. Because he had let Botan die, he had lost his friends, war had broken out, and all three worlds were in a state of panic and distrust. Everything was wrong, but not in this reality, rather it was the reality he had come from that was wrong. The reality he had come from never meant to have happened. The reality he was in now was the right one, even though it seemed like it ought not to be. Everything had been a mess in his own reality, and all because of one little mistake on his part.

Although, he thought, it was no small mistake. He had let Botan die. He had never given that day a second thought before then, but suddenly it was haunting his mind: the sight of her in the clutches of that beast, screaming to him for help, the image of her clothes and skin burning from the acid. He felt a sudden flare of something as that moment replayed in his mind and he realised the feeling he had in that moment must have been the feeling he had experienced in this reality: he had an overwhelming urge to run and destroy the monster, anything to stop Botan's cries of pain, rationality about escaping the angry villagers and the beast long gone from his mind.

He was starting to get quite wet so he turned and walked back inside, closing the sliding doors behind himself. A quick flare of energy warmed his body and evaporated the wetness from his skin and most of his clothes and hair. He could hear Botan talking and followed the sound of her voice, finding her still in Monzan's room, sitting on a brightly coloured plastic chair at his bedside. Hiei stayed out of their line of sight and watched them curiously. Monzan looked close to sleep, and Botan was, accordingly, talking softly to him, apparently telling him a story.

"And then there was a big flash of light!" she said. "And there, in the middle of the arena, daddy reappeared! Because, daddy hadn't been eaten by the dragon, he had become the dragon!"

She was telling the kid a story about him?

"And daddy was so strong, he defeated Bui easily after that," Botan continued. "But daddy didn't kill Bui. He let him live, because he could see that Bui had made a mistake siding with the evil Toguro Brothers, and he wanted to give him a second chance to redeem himself."

That was a warped way of looking at it, Hiei thought. Though he had not really given his fight against Bui much thought after the event. Botan obviously remembered it because she had been there, in the audience, with Yukina and those other women. Botan had been there throughout the entire Dark Tournament. And she had been there through all of the other missions Hiei had endured and the tournaments he had fought in – she had even come to demon world for the demon world tournament. She had always been there, but he had never noticed it before.

He watched her lean over and softly kiss Monzan on the cheek before quietly creeping out of the room and sliding the door half-closed. She turned around and almost bumped into Hiei, clapping a hand over her mouth in her surprise. She quickly calmed herself and touched a finger to her lips to indicate that they should stay quiet. She then took one of Hiei's hands in hers and started leading him through the other rooms of the house towards the bedroom they had slept in the night before. He was holding her left hand and he could feel her wedding ring against his fingers, and it too gave him that odd peaceful feeling when he touched it.

Hiei was starting to think that Mukuro might have done him a favour sending him to this strange reality: it was going to take him a long time to fully adjust to life there, but he already knew that it was the right place for him to be, it was the place that he belonged.

"Why is our bedroom so far away from his?" Hiei quietly asked as they reached their own bedroom.

"Because when Monzan was a baby, you got very angry when he cried," Botan replied, looking slightly hurt. "Remember? You used to yell at me to shut him up and then you would disappear to demon world for days on end."

That sounded like something he would do, but hearing it said like that made him sound like a child. Mukuro had often accused him of over-reacting with angered outbursts like a child, and maybe she had been right. She had been right that he wanted to belong to something and she had been right that he was impetuous and irrational sometimes. She knew him better than he had thought.

"I'll put our next baby at the other side of the house too," Botan continued. "I know you can still hear the cries from that distance, but it's muffled and not so piercing, right?"

Hiei shook his head, unsure what to say.

"Don't worry about it, Hiei," she said, stepping closer to him and touching a hand to his face. "I know that you're very considerate and loving. You show it all the time. Like with that wound you have right now. You could have let me heal it for you, but you know it's not good for me to strain myself expending spirit energy when I'm pregnant and so you said no to my offer of help."

That was, of course, not why Hiei had refused her help, but her interpretation of his refusal was much more noble, so he decided against correcting her.

"I know that you do love me Hiei," she continued. "You never say it any more, but I know that you do because you show it all the time. And I'll never forget that one thing you did that forever cemented my opinion of you."

""Forever cemented"?" Hiei echoed.

Those words were definitely familiar. He started to sweat as an image of Botan dressed in a pink kimono and sobbing into her sleeve appeared in his mind, and he heard her saying something he had truly forgotten until that moment.

" _Hiei, if you walk out of here now without at least trying to redeem your actions today, my opinion of you will be forever cemented. I will never forgive you. I am a forgiving soul by nature and I don't hate, but I will hate you if you can't at least admit that you were wrong. At least admit that I did not deserve what happened to me. If you can't at least do that, then you truly are the most vile monstrosity ever to have graced any of the three worlds, and I will despise you until the end of time itself."_

"Yes Hiei," Botan said, snapping him back to the altered reality and present time. "You stole my heart that day, and you know it. What you did that day was magic and heroic, and that is how I will always remember you, no matter what."

Hiei shifted his weight awkwardly. Botan's words were stirring up more memories of that fateful day where the two realities had diverged: and in particular, she seemed to be saying things that were similar, though conflicting, to what she had said to him in his own reality on that day. He again saw her in his mind, in her ferry girl garb, standing by toddler Koenma at his desk, tears in her eyes and her face contorted with hurt and disappointment.

" _You heartless beast! What you did today was tragic and stoic, and that is how I will always remember you, no matter what!"_

Apparently that day with the rock monster had deeply affected Botan in both realities: in his own reality it had been the defining moment that turned her fully against him, and yet in this reality it had become the moment that had made her realise her feelings for him.

That one, brief moment that had changed everything across all three worlds.

"Oh Hiei, you look so worried!" Botan said.

She released his hand and put her arms around him, holding him in a way that he had never thought anyone would. She really did love him in this reality, beyond reason and doubt. In this reality, Botan loved Hiei every bit as much as she despised him in his own reality.

It occurred to Hiei then that, in his own reality, he was really only aware of what had become of Yusuke, Kurama and Yukina since he had been confined to Mukuro's territory. He did not know if Botan was still a ferry girl, he did not know what Kuwabara had done since Yukina had been taken from him and he had no idea what had happened to the women – Kuwabara's sister or Yusuke's woman. He was mildly curious to know what had happened in all of their lives over the last ten years – he was even curious about Kuwabara – and he wondered what Botan in his reality would do and say if she ever saw him again. It had been ten years, and so much had happened since then.

"How's your wound?"

Botan pulled his shirt from his pants and pushed it up, running her fingers over the healing mark on his abdomen. He knew himself without even looking that it was close to being completely healed. It was almost completely sealed over, apart from the very centre of the cross, which was still a little bit sticky: but another night of sleep would fix that. After all, it had never been a severe wound, though it had surprised him that it had taken so long to heal. He wondered if it was slow to heal because of what it had actually done to him – sending him to an alternate dimension – but he did not dwell on the thought.

"It looks a lot better," Botan concluded.

"I don't care about that," Hiei answered her. "Don't think about it."

He pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside, smiling himself when he saw the sly smile that appeared on Botan's face as her eyes roamed over his bared chest. He pounced at her, his hands fumbling at the fastenings of her clothing. She began pulling at his clothing, and, much to his chagrin, she had him fully naked in a matter of seconds whilst he had done little more than tear the seam of her dress by one hip.

He stood back and scowled at her but she simply laughed at his reaction, muffling her mirth behind her hands so as not to make too much noise. She pointed at the bed and pushed one of his shoulders back. He sat down onto the bed and watched her undress herself, any remaining doubts he had been harbouring about this reality being a bad thing vanishing from his mind. Coming to this reality was the single best thing that had ever happened to him. The only remaining negative thought that lingered in his mind was that he had missed seeing Koenma's face when Botan went against him and that he had missed the birth of their first son: but those were small prices to pay to continue this life.

Botan climbed onto his lap, wrapping her legs around his waist. She touched a finger to his lips and brought her face close to his.

"Remember we have to be very quiet, because Monzan's in the house tonight," she whispered to him.

Hiei did not care. He actually did not even care if she tied him up again, just so long as she did not stop. She lifted herself up slightly and then brought herself down again, impaling herself on him. He had not even realised that he had been that ready for her, but apparently even coming from a reality where he had never cared for her he still found her attractive enough to want her. She put her arms around him and began gently rocking her hips against his, making small noises that told him she was trying very hard not to cry out in pleasure.

Hiei put his arms around Botan and closed his eyes, concentrating on keeping himself quiet as his hips began jerking against hers on instinct and he began enjoying himself every bit as much as she was. The moment ended far sooner than he would have liked, though mostly because they were both too tense in their attempts to stay quiet.

"I like it better when I can hear you," she whispered into his ear as she eased back from him.

"I like to hear you too," he muttered, surprised that he actually meant what he said.

Botan sat further back, bringing her face into his line of sight. She looked slightly worried and strangely Hiei found himself bothered by it.

"Will you be here tomorrow?" she asked carefully, as though she thought the question might offend him.

"Probably," he replied.

Honestly he had no idea. He was starting to accept that he was trapped in this reality, and so he supposed that he would be there the next day. And the day after that.

"Really?" Botan asked, a glint of optimism passing over her eyes as she dared to smile.

"Yes," he replied.

"Monzan goes to kindergarten in the morning, we'll be alone after that," she said. "So we can… You know… Unless you have to go back to demon world, of course."

Hiei smiled. For the first time ever in his life he found that he wanted to be in the living world and the thought of going back to demon world held absolutely no appeal.

"I'm going to stay here with you," he said.

And as he said it, he knew that it was the truth, not just for that night. He was going to stay there with Botan, in that messed up reality where every little thing was wrong but combined everything was perfect. His existence in his own reality had been almost pointless – he had actually wanted to go to war and confront Yusuke and Kurama, in the vague hope that they would kill him and he could at least enjoy an honourable death at the hands of worthy adversaries. In his own reality he had long ago lost sight of any purpose to his life, but in this reality his life was actually enjoyable and filled with things he could really work at: moving back to demon world at the end of Botan's trial, raising his sons and taking over from Mukuro.

"I'm glad you're staying here, Hiei," Botan said. "But you have to promise not to tell me about the baby. Because I might ask you, but I don't really want to know, I just sometimes can't help myself. Is it wrong to say that I want a girl?"

Hiei started to grin as another idea occurred to him, something else he could work at if he stayed in this reality.

"Don't worry about it," he said to her. "If you have a boy, we can always try again for a girl."

"Hiei?" she echoed, looking taken aback at his response.

Apparently Hiei from this reality was still not entirely sold on the idea of having more children, but, after having fatherhood thrust upon him, Hiei was starting to think that maybe having three kids was no worse than having two: and Kurama had told him that Botan would only be able to have children as long as she was in her human body, which was apparently only for another two years. And if he was going to take over a third of demon world he needed a reliable heir and strong soldiers, and Monzan had certainly shown some potential when he had tried to fight Yusuke earlier that night.

"Do I get to name the next child?" he asked.

"Oh Hiei, I know you didn't want to call our son Monzan, but it was so important to me!" Botan gushed.

She climbed off of him, which he was a little bit annoyed at, but she crawled onto the bed and pulled at him to join her and so he forgave her, gladly lying down next to her.

"Monzan Kadokura was the most memorable soul I ever collected," she said with a sigh. "He was the last in a long line of noble warriors, all named Monzan Kadokura, because the name was considered to pass on strength, honour and luck. It broke my heart when he… Oh, I'm so sorry Hiei, I must have told you this story a hundred times or more!"

"Tell me again," Hiei insisted.

He was not really fond of the name Monzan, but she was starting to enamour him to it with her story about noble warriors.

"Well, Monzan Kadokura was a very honourable warrior during the end of the Edo Period," Botan said. "He was named after his father, who had been named after his father, all the way back for countless generations, and they had all been famous samurai warriors. But the Monzan Kadokura that I met was the last of his family. He had gone into war at a young age and never married and he died quite young too. He only had sisters, and none of them continued the tradition. He never lived long enough to rise to the great status that his father did, and I felt like his story had been cut short. He was meant to have lived longer, become a great leader, and had that son who he would call Monzan, but he never did. I know it's silly, but when I think of Monzan Kadokura, I feel like he was in the wrong universe somehow, almost as though his death was a mistake, as though somewhere, in some other universe, he lived on, he did become a great leader and he did have that family he wanted… But that's silly, right?"

"No," Hiei flatly replied.

It made more sense than he would ever dare admit to her: after all, was that not what his circumstances were? She had named their son Monzan thinking that Monzan Kadokura's story had meant something to her when actually it meant more to him.

"Hiei, you're being very romantic lately," Botan said. "Not that I'm not enjoying it, but it seems to just be since Mukuro gave you that wound, and I'm worried that maybe she's affected your brain somehow!"

"Maybe she did," Hiei muttered. "I'm thinking clearer now than I ever have."

"…What?"

Hiei groaned out something he had intended to be words but came out more as nonsense. Botan gave him a curious look but when he grabbed her into his arms her face changed and she gladly melted into his hold. She started making small, suppressed moans as he took the time to actually explore her body with his hands, until eventually he had to clamp a hand over her mouth. She frowned at him at first for doing so but then he felt her lips form a smile beneath his fingers and she put a hand over his mouth. She probably thought she was being really funny – and a very small part of Hiei agreed with her.

"For a creature born from spirit world, you certainly have a voracious appetite for sex," he said, his voice muffled against her hand.

"I have no other choice!" she gasped, pushing his hand from her mouth. "You leave me, sometimes for weeks at a time, and I have to live like a sex camel."

Hiei slowly pulled her hand from his mouth, frowning down at her questioningly, hoping that she could correct her last bizarre statement.

"…A "sex camel"?" he asked when she did not say any more.

"Yes, a sex camel," she said again, looking quite serious despite the ridiculousness of her words. "I have to fill up on it whenever I get the chance and store it away, because I never know when I'll get the chance to get any more!"

Hiei felt his face twist. He did not know it he was offended, amused or just perplexed by her words.

"I wish that we could have more time together, but I'm not ungrateful," she added, her face softening. "I know that I'm lucky to have a lover like you, Hiei. Even after all this time together, we still have the same passion of a new love."

Hiei wondered if that was true. From the look on Botan's face, it was apparently true for her, but he wondered if it was true for him. If he had been with Botan for the last eight years, would the last few minutes had felt as good as they did after having only been with her for two days?

He supposed there was only one way to find out if it always feel so good: Hiei closed the gap between them, taking his time to kiss her, letting his hands continue to rove over ever last curve and crevice of her body

After a prolonged and muted session of simply touching and kissing to the sound of the rain falling on the wooden house and the wind creaking and whining through the trees, Hiei and Botan fell asleep in each other's arms. The last thought Hiei clearly had in his mind before sleep took him over was that he would be holding her to her promise in the morning: as soon as Monzan was gone he was going to make her scream his name over and over.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** The plot, and therefore also the angst, begins. Hiei arrives abruptly back in his own reality, trapped in the living world and surrounded by increasing evidence that his own reality is far more terrible than he had ever thought, for all concerned, as he finally finds out what has become of Kuwabara, Keiko and Botan in the last 10 years. **Chapter 5 – Bitter Truths**


	5. Bitter Truths

**A/N:** I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho or any of the characters herein, they are all the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. Except Hitoshi the ambassador/diplomat. And Monzan the sprog!

 **Recap:** Kurama figured out Hiei did not belong and explained to him that the difference in the reality he is in is that he saved Botan from the rock monster and they were trapped in a cave, where he fell in love with her. Hiei decided he quite liked having a family and that he would stay in the altered reality and continue his new life there.

* * *

 **Chapter 5: Bitter Truths**

The first thing Hiei felt as he began to slowly awaken was the cold. It was surprisingly cold. And wet. Really, really wet. And he was fully clothed, which was quite bizarre, because he was sure that he had been naked when he had fallen asleep, and yet now he was back in his pants and shirt and even his boots. He shuffled about slightly and felt the scabbard of his sword tangle in his legs.

Hiei opened his eyes abruptly. He was no longer in his bed, in his bedroom or even in his tree-house. In fact, he was lying on the cold, wet forest floor, surrounded by densely packed trees that almost completely blocked out the light of the sky. It was raining and he had apparently been lying out in the rain for a long time, because small puddles had formed in the loose folds of his pants.

He sat up sharply, spraying water about himself as his head flicked from side to side. The forest around him was old and overgrown, with no sign of the clearing where his tree-house had been built. At first he worried that his earlier concerns about the wind and rain destroying the tree-house had been realised, and that thought had him on his feet, shouting out the names of his wife and son before he even realised what he was doing, as though he was acting on instinct. When he received no reply after several seconds of frantic yelling Hiei stopped, trying to calm himself and focus on what was actually going on around him.

He looked down at himself. He was wearing his usual pants and boots but he was wearing a black shirt – apparently the same black shirt he had been wearing when Mukuro had used her Dividing Realities attack on him, because it was torn around the point where he had suffered his injury, exposing a section of his body. There was no trace of the wound left on his skin, but the hole in his shirt was big enough to reveal something that made Hiei's blood run cold: he had two hiruiseki hanging around his neck.

"Fuck!" he shouted.

He looked about himself, gradually realising that he was still in the same place he had been the night before – some of the trees were recognisable – but it looked as though he was in a reality where the forest had never been disturbed to build a tree-house, and that was something he did not want to have to think about. He grabbed the sheath at his hip in his left hand, his right hand closing redundantly around empty space: the sheath was empty, his sword absent, and nowhere to be seen around him.

And, looking further downwards, Hiei saw something that made him feel positively ill.

His wedding ring was gone.

Hiei started to run. He was heading in the approximate direction of the old lady's temple, his mind screaming that this had to be a dream or a mistake somehow. He had been lying in bed with Botan the night before and he could not remember anything changing, there was no way he could have lost all of that. The trees thinned slightly around him and then suddenly he was out in the open, and he almost fell over in shock at the sight that greeted him.

The beautiful gardens of the old lady's temple had gone to ruin, become overgrown and vandalised. The temple itself looked as though it had been partially destroyed by fire and left for ruin, with tape around parts of it that declared it a "condemned building".

This was so, so wrong.

Was this how Mukuro's attack worked? Did it keep sending him to new and different realities? Was he doomed to be randomly thrown from one hell to the next until the end of time?

Hiei shook off the thought and ran to the temple, leaping in through a broken down wall. Inside, the temple looked even worse than it had outside. Animals had been living in it and plants had grown through the floorboards. The walls were littered with graffiti and the whole place stunk of urine, excrement and rot. There were rats scurrying about, spiders spinning ever-thickening webs in the corners of every room and there was an abundance of litter, including countless used condoms and broken glass bottles of alcohol.

"Fuck!" Hiei cursed again.

He turned and ran out of the temple, heading towards the steps. The gate over the steps had been badly vandalised and was barely standing, and the steps themselves were coated in graffiti and the edges of the steps had been rounded or chipped where they had been worn down by misuse. Hiei ran faster, pushing himself on. He soon cleared the forest and reached the road beyond it, following it for several minutes before finally entering the city.

On instinct, Hiei took himself to Kurama's shop. Kurama was a clever bastard, he would know what was happening and he would know how to fix it, Hiei told himself.

He finally reached the street he sought and skidded to a halt by the building Kurama'a shop had been in, feeling almost light-headed at what he saw: where there had been a green shop with tables of potted plants littering the street there was now a white shop with multi-coloured lights in the windows and ridiculous, shiny little trinkets on display. Hiei slowly moved to the shop door, hesitating briefly before pushing it open and stepping inside.

For several seconds, Hiei stood in the same spot, barely inside the shop, looking about himself. He saw plastic models of creatures that would not look amiss in demon world, most of which were kept locked into glass display cabinets. At the top corner of the shop two young men in black shirts were chatting between themselves too loudly about how attractive they thought the two girls walking about the shop pretending not to hear them were. The moment seemed to drag on for Hiei, and he almost welcomed it, because in that moment it was almost as though he had imagined everything since he had woken up that morning. He closed his eyes and opened his jagan eye, barely caring if the humans in the shop saw what he was doing or not.

What his third eye saw erased the last shred of doubt in Hiei's mind: he was back in his own reality.

He could see Yukina in the ice village, and she looked miserable. She was holding a bowl of tea and that particularly ugly, hunchbacked old ice witch was lecturing her on something. Hiei could not hear what she was saying, but he could see his sister's face only too clearly: her red eyes were dull and lifeless, unfocused behind hooded eyelids, her head tilted slightly downwards and the faintest hint of tension around her jaw as though she was moments away from tears. It was the same way she had looked ever since she had been returned to that vile place, and only in his own reality could she be so miserable. As he watched, Hiei saw the old woman smack the bowl out of Yukina's hands, and Yukina barely flinched in response. The bowl shattered against the hard, icy ground and Yukina slowly knelt down and began trying to pick up the broken pieces. She cut one finger on the shards but seemed not to notice, continuing her task without hesitation as the old witch continued to yell at her.

And then Hiei saw something that made him lose the fragile grip he had left on his own temper: the old ice bitch grabbed a handful of Yukina's hair, pulled her head up and then slapped her hard across the face with her other hand.

By the time Hiei had fully closed his jagan eye and fully opened his own eyes he had already broken apart two of the glass display cabinets and the girls had run screaming from the shop. Blinded by fury Hiei swore repeatedly and broke anything his hands touched. He was injuring himself on broken glass but he could not even feel the wounds he was creating. He had lost self-control beyond all reason: how was it possible that he could be back in this reality? He had gone to sleep in a reality where his sister was a bright, happy and loving girl and he had woken up in a reality where she was dull, miserable and empty. She might as well be dead, he thought. What sort of existence was that for her? She deserved so much better – she had had so much better, he had seen that in the other reality.

Hiei regained a small amount of awareness as he heard sirens and saw flashing lights. Although he knew that human law enforcers could not stop him, he did not want the hassle of dealing with them and so he fled the shop, running blindly through the city streets, moving in no particular direction other than away from the shop. He kept running until he could no longer hear the sirens, then stopping and leaping his way up to the top of a tall building.

He stopped there, sitting down and trying his hardest to clear his mind. His house was gone, the temple was a wreck and Yukina was lost, but he was not about to give up. He focused on Botan, searching for her with his third eye, feeling out as far as he could for any trace of her spirit energy.

Hiei looked for Botan for more than ten minutes before finally accepting that he would not be able to find her. He was unsure what that meant: was she just beyond his reach, was she dead or had she ceased to exist altogether? He did not like any of those three possibilities, and so he started looking for Kurama. Kurama was difficult to find, and in his own reality, the fox was impossible to locate as he was a master of disguise and he no longer allowed the small margin of transparency that he once had to let Hiei find him when he needed to. And unfortunately, several minutes of searching did not uncover Kurama in any form.

Hiei started looking for Yusuke. Like Kurama, the Yusuke of his reality had developed ways of hiding his true location and ways of sending out conflicting energy signals to distort any attempts made at locating him. And apparently that was the same Yusuke that Hiei was looking for, because, although he could sense hints of Yusuke's presence where they ought to be, he could not pinpoint or actually see Yusuke in his mind.

Out of sheer desperation, Hiei started looking for Kuwabara. At least the human ought to be nearby somewhere, and with his uniquely strong spirit he would stand out from the average humans around him, making him easy to locate. And Hiei was not wrong: within mere seconds of trying, he had found Kuwabara's unique energy signal, and it was less than a mile from his current location. Without waiting long enough to visually check on Kuwabara, Hiei got to his feet and took off in the direction of the signal.

Hiei's mind was blank as he ran. He did not want to think about anything, because maybe if he did it would be true. Maybe if he allowed himself to think that he had left that strange alternate reality and returned to his own, dark and horrible reality then it would be true. Maybe if he ignored it, maybe if he pretended that he was still in that other reality it would not be true, and maybe he would still be living a life where he did not care that he was a human sympathiser.

Hiei staggered to a halt as he reached the location of the signal he had been tracking. He felt numb as he watched through a large glass window at the scene within what a sign above it told him was "Yukimura Restaurant".

Yusuke's woman was serving a tray of food to a man in a suit with shaved orange hair and a splash of what was probably meant to be stylish facial hair about his lips and chin. Neither of them were looking at each other, both looked completely distracted and neither of them looked like they did in the reality Hiei had just left.

Hiei took a deep breath and then proceeded into the restaurant as Yusuke's woman disappeared through a door at the back of the room. Hiei watched the door bang shut behind her before turning his attention to the suited man at the table, who was draped over a newspaper, his eyes never leaving it as he casually lifted food to his mouth.

"Kuwabara?" Hiei said, stopping one table along from him.

The man sniffed sharply and turned his head, looking at Hiei with blank dark eyes that clearly showed no signs of recognition whatsoever.

"Can I help you, buddy?" he asked.

Hiei felt another sickening taste of the bitter truth that was his own reality overwhelming him.

"Kuwabara," he said again. "You have to do something, Kuwabara."

Kuwabara – for, although he looked very little like the Kuwabara that Hiei had known, it was still him – narrowed his eyes slightly, lowering his chopsticks to rub at his short little beard in a was that was both infuriating to watch and nauseating to listen to.

"Do I know you?" he asked.

"Of course you know me, you cumbersome fool!" Hiei snapped. "Stop messing me about! Don't you know what they've done to Yukina?"

Kuwabara put down the page of his newspaper that he had been about to turn and moved around in his seat to fully face Hiei, the still black look in his eyes becoming increasingly annoying for Hiei to witness.

"Listen buddy, I don't know who you are, or how you know my name, but I'd like you to just back off," he said coldly. "If you don't, I'll have the owner of this restaurant call the police."

"You'll do what?" Hiei echoed. "Why don't you just try to fight me like you usually do?"

Kuwabara eyed him over before snorting humourlessly.

"I don't fight, I'm a professional businessman," he said haughtily. "And even if I did, I wouldn't waste my efforts on a little boy like you."

Hiei growled and bared his teeth. This was infuriating! He started to think about doing to the restaurant exactly what he had done to that stupid shop that had been where Kurama's shop was supposed to be, but he stopped himself as Yusuke's woman reappeared. She took a few steps into the restaurant before stopping short, her eyes on Hiei. By the shock in her features it was clear that she was not having the same difficulty remembering him that Kuwabara apparently was.

"Hiei?" she said.

Hiei smiled at the sound of his name. He did not even care when his expression made her recoil from him in mild fear and disgust.

"How the hell are you here?" she asked, taking a wary step back from him. "I thought they put the Kakai Barrier back up? At least, that was what Yusuke had his servants tell me. That was his excuse for never coming back. For leading me on for years and then just running off to demon world anyway and leaving me behind!"

She was displaying quite a lot of anger and unresolved issues, but Hiei did not really care about her. He only had two priorities right then: Yukina and Botan. He had to get his sister out of the ice village and he had to find Botan. After that, everything else would work out – it certainly had in the other reality after he had married Botan.

"Tell me your name," Hiei said as calmly as he could. "This time I swear I will make the effort to remember it."

"It's Keiko, you asshole," she sarcastically replied.

"Okay, Keiko, can you tell me why Kuwabara is acting like an idiot?" he asked. "And I mean why is he acting more idiotic than usual?"

"He probably doesn't even know who you are," Keiko replied with a shrug. "He doesn't remember much since those SDF soldiers wiped his memories."

"What?"

"When they came to take Yukina away they had to contain Kuwabara to stop him fighting them for her. He threatened to cut down the Kakai Barrier and go after her, so they wiped his memories to stop him following through with it. He doesn't remember anything. He comes here because I made the effort to become his friend again, but he doesn't remember that he went to school with me and he doesn't remember anything about the things he used to do for spirit world. I think he still sees dead people sometimes, but they did something to his brain so that he just thinks he's dreaming when it happens. He doesn't even know what a spirit sword is, never mind how to use one."

Hiei slowly shook his head.

"So Hiei," Keiko said, folding her arms over her chest. "How did you get into this world?"

"If I told you, you would never believe me," he flatly replied. "But you raise an interesting point: if the Kakai Barrier is still up, I'm now stuck in the living world."

That was an added complication Hiei had not even considered until that moment: he was stuck in the living world, and he did not even have the advantage of having any of his friends or family there any more.

"I need to get back to demon world," he said aloud.

"Well don't look at me," Keiko scoffed. "If I knew a way into demon world, I would have gone there myself by now and dragged Yusuke Urameshi back here… How is he anyway?"

"I don't know, I haven't seen him in over ten years," Hiei replied.

"Oh…" Keiko said, nodding slowly. "Oh! That's right! You got sent back to demon world because you killed Botan!"

"I didn't kill Botan!" Hiei roared.

"Didn't you burn her with acid, or crush her with rocks or eat her or something?"

Hiei growled, his energy rising against his will. His desire to destroy the restaurant was becoming almost uncontrollable.

"Forget it!" he snapped. "If Kuwabara can't break the barrier for me or at least help me get Yukina back then neither of you are of any use to me!"

Hiei turned on his heel and sped out of the restaurant. He ran, but without direction or purpose. It was still raining, and although it was mid-morning, it was dull and almost as dark as dusk conditions because of the cloud cover. The entire city was grey and lifeless and every bit as pointless as Hiei's true reality was. As he ran, he came to a decision: he only had two options left. His first option was to find Botan, marry her and start setting things right again and his second option – which was frankly the most appealing of the two – was to find a way back to that other reality.

He had to find a way back to demon world. There he could make Mukuro send him back, and this time he would make sure that she sent him there permanently. There was nothing left in this reality for him any more, and the other reality was perfect, his ultimate existence resided there, all set up and ready for him to just walk into it. He laughed bitterly as he thought that, two days ago, he had been desperate to return to this place, and in that short amount of time his entire life – his every need, want, aspiration and belief – had been turned completely upside-down.

And then Hiei felt it. That unique, entirely pure aura of a ferry girl. He looked about himself desperately, silently wondering why he was sensing a ferry girl: either he had died or one was willingly showing herself to him. Maybe he had died, he thought whimsically. Maybe Mukuro's move had actually killed him, and he had been given a brief glimpse of heaven before being sent to the hell he now found himself in.

Except that the hell he was in was just reality – his reality, the reality he had created because he had let Botan die and he had killed Hitoshi.

Hiei started to get angry again but the feeling faded as he finally sighted what he could sense close by. In the sky ahead of him a single ferry girl was hovering on point, looking in his direction. She was dressed in a black kimono, and sat sideways on her oar with perfect posture. For a brief and gloriously illogical moment, Hiei thought that he was running towards Botan.

But then he got closer and realised that she had black hair pinned up at the back of her head and a dull expression and pale complexion, and she was hovering above two soldiers of the Spirit World Defence Force.

Hiei stopped. Did the Spirit World Defence Force still have orders to kill him on sight for entering the living world in this reality, he wondered?

"Hiei!" one of the soldiers called out to him. "Don't move. By order of Lord Koenma of spirit world, you are sentenced to summary execution for breach of your ban from crossing into the living world."

The soldier continued talking but Hiei stopped listening. He turned and ran off, barely evading an energy blast that melted the edge of the heel of his right boot as he rounded the corner of a civilian building he knew the soldiers would not dare shoot at for fear of injuring innocent humans. He had been hoping he would find something to distract him from his own self-pity, but this was really not the sort of distraction he needed. He could barely believe that spirit world had caught him there already and that all they cared about was that he had broken the rules of that stupid ban Koenma had placed on him ten years ago: surely the fact that an S-class demon had passed through the rebuilt Kakai Barrier during a time of major war ought to have been a more pressing concern for them? Surely they wanted to capture him and ask him how he had got to where he was rather than just kill him over something so trivial?

When another blast passed Hiei's head closely enough that the displaced air around it burned the skin of his cheek he remembered that he was being pursued by officers of spirit world and that nothing from spirit world ever made sense.

Except for Botan.

Hiei cleared his mind again and he realised that he had to try to get back to demon world. He needed to get away from the Spirit World Defence Force and back in demon world he could find Mukuro and make her send him back to the other reality, where Keiko was not a moody bitch and Kuwabara was not a bland dickhead with unflattering facial hair, where Yukina was not a lifeless puppet trapped in the ice village, where Yusuke and Kurama were happy and behaving like themselves instead of power-hungry fighting machines and, most importantly of all, Botan was his wife.

By sheer luck, he was sure, Hiei managed to find a portal to demon world before the soldiers chasing him managed to strike. Halfway there, two more soldiers had joined the pursuit from a different direction, making his escape all the harder, and he could sense that the remainder of King Enma's elite troops were closing in from further away, and in a matter of minutes, he would be surrounded with no hope of escape. He could fight back, but he knew that doing so was far more bother than it was worth, and he did not want to make himself any more of an enemy of spirit world anyway. And so he leapt through the portal, hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

Apparently in his own reality, hope was well and truly bereft from his life: the second he passed through the portal he fell against the webbed structure of the Kakai Barrier.

Passing through it was obviously impossible, and for the amount of pain he was in, Hiei knew that if he did not turn around and retreat back into the living world he would die in a matter of seconds. Reluctantly he tore himself away from the barrier, falling back through the portal and landing hard on his back on the cold wet ground, where he was shortly surrounded by the four Spirit World Defence Force soldiers who had been close behind him before he had made his desperate bid for freedom.

"Hiei, we have orders to execute you immediately for this breach of your sentence," one of the soldiers told him. "Do you have any last words before we proceed?"

Hiei looked up at them wearily, blinking against the still falling rain. They looked exactly the same as they always had: they were still dressed in those ridiculous uniforms that made them look anything but intimidating and professional. He decided that his last words might as well be to tell them exactly what he thought of them all, but before he could voice that thought he caught sight of something flickering behind one of them and suddenly he found a reason to dare to hope again.

"What's that behind you?" he asked. "Is that a portal to spirit world?"

"We have to take your body there once we're done," one of the soldiers replied.

Hiei did not care why they had opened the portal, he only cared that it was open. Using his famous speed he launched himself through the portal before any of the soldiers could so much as blink.

On the other side of the portal, Hiei was surrounded by misty hills and a long, winding road that ultimately led to the temple where anything of consequence actually happened in spirit world. As he ran that road he wondered why the stupid soldiers had opened their portal so far away from their goal location – but he supposed that was just another example of how backward spirit world logic truly was.

"Botan!" he yelled as he sighted a small gathering of ferry girls ahead of him.

They all screamed and scattered, but he did not really care as none of them were Botan anyway. When he reached the temple door it was shut and locked, but a few kicks and a shouldering later had a section of one door shattered apart and he was inside the temple.

"Botan!" he yelled, charging through the midst of a cluster of ferry girls and ogres. "Botan!"

Everyone around him was clearly terrified of him but he was too focused on finding Botan to really notice or to care. He was certain that if he found her, everything would be alright. That was how it had worked in the other reality. He just had to be with Botan and everything would be alright again.

"Botan!"

Hiei kicked down a door into a small tearoom and stomped into it, looking about twice before stopping, his entire body halting every action at what he saw.

"Botan?" he said softly.

She looked as shocked to see him as he did to see her. She was at a low table with three other ferry girls, all of whom had stood up at his entrance. She was dressed in her typical ferry girl clothing and her hair was swept up in a high ponytail, but otherwise she was the same Botan he had been ravishing the night before in the living world.

"Botan?" he said again.

For some reason, the sound of his voice saying her name again seemed to snap her out of her dazed state of mind, and Hiei saw something that almost tore him apart: her face contorted in fear and pure hatred.

"Oh please, no!" she screamed, staggering back from the table. "No, no, no! Please no! Please don't let him hurt me!"

Hiei took a step forwards and Botan screamed so loudly his ears started to whine. She staggered back and tripped over her own ankles, falling down and continuing to shuffle back on her backside in her desperation to put some distance between them. Hiei had seen plenty of others look at him with the amount fear that Botan was displaying right then but it had never bothered him before – in fact, he had always quite liked it – but seeing Botan look at him like that was more painful than the most intense fight he had ever had against Mukuro.

It was more painful than the operation he had undergone to have his jagan eye implanted, and that was really saying something.

"Why is he here?" she wailed, looking around the other ferry girls. "How did he get here? What is he doing here? Did he come here to kill us all?"

Hiei walked forwards and Botan screamed again, shuffling back until her back hit the wall. She bashed her head against the wall too and it had looked and sounded quite painful, but she was screaming so much it was hard to tell if she had even felt it. As he got closer, Hiei saw that she was crying too, and that only made him feel even worse.

"Botan, you don't understand," he said.

Suddenly one of the other ferry girls swung a metal baseball bat at the back of his head, hitting him with all her strength. The bat clanged against his head and Hiei slowly moved his eyes to her.

"Well that was mildly irritating," he muttered sarcastically.

The girl dropped her bat and ran screaming from the room. Hiei turned his attention back to Botan and found her trying to prise open a flat circular device, but her hands were shaking so much she kept dropping it.

"Botan, I came here to see you," he said. "We have to go to demon world, nobody here understands."

She whimpered out a strangled string of nonsensical words and continued trying to prise open her device, sniffling as her tears started to become more frequent. The other two ferry girls slipped out of the room.

"Look, just get a grip of yourself, woman!" he barked impatiently. "It was ten fucking years ago! And you promised you would have loud sex with me this morning!"

Botan stopped crying. She dropped the device she had been holding, but she was too busy glaring unblinkingly at Hiei to notice. He started to think that he had probably said the wrong thing – but he had never cared for diplomacy, perhaps that was another reason why he had hated Hitoshi so much – and at least he had managed to get Botan to stop crying. Surely that counted for something?

"How dare you use language like that in front of my Botan?"

Hiei started to groan as he recognised the voice behind him as that of Koenma himself, but his complaint was cut short as something hit him hard in the small of his back and he fell to his knees. He lost his balance and fell forwards, his head and shoulders landing on Botan's legs. She moaned and cried and stiffened beneath him. He lifted his head, looking up at her curiously for a moment.

"Botan…" he said.

"Please don't hurt me!" she squeaked out.

"I don't want to hurt you," he replied, grabbing handfuls of her kimono at her thighs and dragging himself closer to her. "Just let me make you scream, you said you would scream for me in the morning after the–"

Hiei stopped short as something battered against the back of his head. He felt himself slipping out of consciousness, and in his last waking moments he grabbed at Botan's shoulders, trying to get a hold of her. His eyes drifted shut against his will and the last thing he heard before passing out was Botan begging Koenma to get him off of her.

* * *

Hiei awoke with a throbbing headache, a debilitating pain in his lower back and the sickening sight of a spirit world maximum security prison cell around him. He thought that maybe he was now too strong to be held back by a measly spirit world prison cell, but the sight of two Spirit World Defence Force solders standing either side of the outside of the cell told him that he would only injure himself further if he even attempted escape.

"Sir, the prisoner is awake," one of the soldiers said.

Hiei got to his feet, looking about to see who she had been referring to. He could not see or hear anyone responding to the soldier's words but he stopped caring about that when he heard a voice screaming out in pain. It was far away and barely audible, but there was no mistaking that it was Botan.

"What's going on out there?" he yelled, approaching the front of the cell. "Hey! You! Servants! What's happening out there?"

"Lord Koenma is on his way down here to deal with you," one of the soldiers eventually answered him.

Great, Hiei thought. Now his fate was about to be decided by a child smaller and less dexterous than his own son Monzan was.

"Hiei," he heard the brat's voice saying. "I'm curious: how did an S-class like yourself manage to penetrate spirit world's Kakai Barrier?"

The prince finally came into Hiei's line of sight, and he was mildly surprised to see that he was in his adult form – though it was arguably less dignified, as he was still sucking on his pacifier. Even Monzan had not needed a pacifier.

Monzan seemed to surfacing in his thoughts a lot – Hiei wondered why.

"It was a mistake," Hiei replied. "Just send me back to demon world."

"No can do," Koenma replied.

Even as an adult he still had a whiny, childish voice that was begging to be strangled into silence.

"Why is my wife screaming?" Hiei suddenly blurted out, surprising everyone else almost as much as he surprised himself.

"Excuse me?" Koenma echoed.

"My wi…"

Hiei stopped himself, licking at his lips nervously.

"My… Botan… What are you doing to her?" he eventually managed. "If you're hurting her, I will fucking tear you apart!"

Koenma arched his eyebrows.

"I see," he said sarcastically. "So the last time we met, as I recall, you were telling me that my Botan was just a false illusion of life, just a mindless drone with no thoughts or feelings, and that you had no regrets about letting her suffer a very slow and very painful death at the hands of a rock monster that was trying to kill you, meaning that basically you sacrificed her life in place of your own, knowing that she could not fight the monster like you could have. And now, a few years later, you break into the living world, trash a shop, confuse Kazuma Kuwabara and Keiko Yukimura, you evade arrest and capture from the SDF, you force your way into spirit world and you seek out Botan and demand that she has "loud sex" with you, and now I'm supposed to believe that you care why she's so upset?"

"You're an insolent little shit," Hiei growled back at him. "You don't know what you're talking about. Botan isn't happy right now because she's not with me! She's supposed to be with me! Everything is wrong because she isn't having my next baby!"

Koenma's face twisted and let out a few short, forced, sarcastic laughs.

"Hiei, clearly you don't remember what happened the last time you were here," he said.

"I remember everything!" Hiei yelled back. "But none of that is important! You need to tell me who is making my wife scream like that, because I am going to kill the fucker!"

"Your wife?" Koenma echoed.

"Yes my wife! Are you deaf as well as stupid?"

Koenma sighed lightly.

"Botan is crying because she's scared of you, Hiei," he said.

"Fuck off!" Hiei shot back. "That's ridiculous!"

Koenma sighed again, this time not bothering to hide the action.

"Take him up to my office," he said to the soldiers standing by Hiei's cell.

"What for?" Hiei barked, backing up as the cell door opened up in front of him.

"I'm going to show you something," Koenma replied, walking on out of his sight.

Hiei reluctantly left his cell, flanked by soldiers of the Spirit World Defence Force who infrequently jabbed him in the back as he walked for no other reason than because they could. As he neared the brat's office he could hear Botan's sobs getting louder: apparently she was already there. He was unsure if he wanted to see her again or not. He did not want to see her looking at him with fear and hatred in her eyes again, but equally being near her was the only thing that gave him any strength and purpose.

The decision was shortly taken out of his hands as he was pushed through a set of double doors into Koenma unnecessarily large office and forced to stand by his desk, which Botan was sat behind in Koenma's chair – which struck Hiei as slightly odd.

"I have several security cameras in this office," Koenma explained. "Which is partly how I knew that you were responsible for stealing the Shadow Sword all those years ago."

Hiei heard what Koenma was saying but he was not truly giving his words any consideration. Instead he was staring at Botan, who was deliberately avoiding looking at him, instead snivelling into a tissue and pretending to be interested in the seam of one of her sleeves.

"And since you can't seem to remember why you were banned from this place, I thought I might show you the video of what happened the last time you were here in my office," Koenma continued.

Hiei swallowed hard, the sight of tears still blurring Botan's large pink eyes angering him. He wanted to kill whatever had done that to her – but he already knew that she was crying because of him, and that just made it worse. The day before she had been washing him and kissing him and gazing at him lovingly and promising to always be there for him and now she was treating him like he was pure evil.

"Why are we still pretending that a ferry girl has feelings? It's not even a real thing, it's just an illusion used by spirit world to coax lost souls into the afterlife!"

Hiei cringed at the sound of his voice saying those words and the fresh onslaught of tears they brought to Botan's eyes. She moaned softly into her tissue and Hiei reluctantly turned to the television screen behind him, watching in a cold sweat of horror as Botan walked into the picture, moving to stand by Koenma at his desk.

"I-is that what you really think of me?" she said. "You think I'm just an artificial homunculus, a thoughtless drone, a soulless being who just wanders around collecting souls?"

"Hn, that's exactly what you are! Am I supposed to care that this thing looks like it's crying?"

Hiei wanted to punch his fist through the television screen – had he actually said that about Botan? And to her face? Had he no shame?

"She is crying, you heartless menace!" Koenma on the screen said.

"Can I go now?" television Hiei asked.

"You need to apologise to Botan, Hiei," Koenma replied.

"I don't apologise," Hiei told him. "Ever. I never apologise because I never make mistakes and I have no regrets."

"Oh, so you deliberately let me die and you don't regret it?" video Botan asked.

"Maybe I regret that your demise was not permanent," he spat back.

Hiei cringed again as both Botans – the one on the television and the one sat at Koenma's desk beside him – gasped and sobbed.

"Hiei, if you don't apologise to Botan, I have no other choice but to ban you from spirit world and the living world, and to let you know that if you ever visit either place, you will be killed instantly by an officer of the SDF," video Koenma said.

"I hate spirit world and I hate the living world," video Hiei replied. "Banning me from those places is not even a punishment as far as I am concerned."

"I thought you might say something like that," video Koenma said. "Which is why I consulted with Yomi and Yusuke. They've both agreed that you are banned from their respective territories within demon world too. If you do not apologise to Botan, you will be forced to spend the rest of your existence within Mukuro's territory only, and you will never see any of your friends again – Yusuke and Kurama don't want to know you if you don't make amends with Botan."

"I can't think of anything more disgraceful and painful for me than to stand here and pretend that I care about that thing beside you. I refuse to continue this charade. Send me back to Mukuro's territory and contain me there if you want. There's nothing and no-one outside of that place that I want to be involved with anyway."

"Fine then, so be it. I hope you meant it when you said you have no regrets Hiei, because there's no undoing this now."

"I don't care."

"I can't believe I was so wrong about you," video Botan said. "Hiei, I… I always thought that you were so brave and strong and noble… I was scared of you, but I trusted you, and I even liked you! I simply can't believe you would just walk out on us all like this! Please reconsider! Is this really what you want? Really? You feel no remorse at all? You can't even pretend to feel remorse for the sake of your friends, Yusuke and Kurama? Are you really that stubborn, that proud, that pig-headed? Hiei, if you walk out of here now without at least trying to redeem your actions today, my opinion of you will be forever cemented," it said. "I will never forgive you. I am a forgiving soul by nature and I don't hate, but I will hate you if you can't at least admit that you were wrong. At least admit that I did not deserve what happened to me. If you can't at least do that, then you truly are the most vile monstrosity ever to have graced any of the three worlds, and I will despise you until the end of time itself."

Hiei closed his eyes and hung his head: he already knew what was coming next and having to hear it again was an unnecessary pain he could well do without at that moment.

"I don't care what you think," he heard himself say. "If I was in the same situation again, I would not do anything differently. You got what you deserved today. Pointless, thoughtless things like you mean absolutely nothing to me."

"You heartless beast!" Botan cried back. "What you did today was tragic and stoic, and that is how I will always remember you, no matter what!"

"Stop the tape," Hiei said, opening his eyes but turning his head from the screen.

Nobody responded to his request and he heard Koenma dismissing him from his office on the video.

"I thought I knew his heart," he heard Botan say. "I never thought I could be so wrong about someone."

The tape finally stopped and Hiei lifted his head again, looking directly at Koenma.

"So now you see why you're not allowed in here, Hiei," Koenma told him.

"Fuck you, you smug son of a bitch," Hiei snarled.

"Don't speak to Lord Koenma like that!" Botan said. "He's a good man, he has a good heart and he's done many wonderful things!"

"Don't upset yourself, Botan," Koenma said, moving around his desk to stand next to her.

"Koenma is an idiot!" Hiei told her. "You were supposed to tell him to go fuck himself so that we could get married!"

Botan's head snapped up and she met his eyes for the first time since he had encountered her in the tea room.

"What?" she echoed.

"You're supposed to marry me!" Hiei repeated. "Everything is wrong because you didn't!"

"Why would I marry a monster like you?" she growled back at him. "I despise you every bit as much as you despise me, Hiei! Marriage is a sacred thing, it should only be ventured into by people who are in love! How dare you belittle it like that?"

"No, you stupid…"

Hiei fought to find the words, again cursing his own inability to be diplomatic.

"Mukuro's on her way here to take you back to where you belong," Koenma said.

Hiei turned to him, glaring at him accusingly.

"I thought you intended to kill me?" he asked.

"I think it's easier for all concerned if you just go back to the pits of demon world where you belong," Koenma darkly replied.

"Hn, fine by me!" Hiei said. "It was ridiculous having me arrested in the first place!"

"Maybe it was," Koenma agreed. "But I'm sure you don't understand why I reacted so severely. This is, after all, somewhat of a personal case for me."

Hiei froze long enough to watch Koenma lean down towards Botan who willingly tilted her head back and let him kiss her on the lips. As they made contact Hiei snapped and lost all self-control, leaping up onto the desk between them and tugging desperately at the warding bandages around his right arm.

"I'm going to fucking kill you!" he warned.

The last thing Hiei saw was the fearful look in Koenma's eyes before his legs were kicked out from under him and he fell awkwardly from the desk to the floor, where the soldiers of the Spirit World Defence Force quickly surrounded him.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Mukuro tells Hiei why she developed the Dividing Realities attack and she agrees to send him away again: but when Hiei reaches the alternate reality, he finds that things are not quite how they were the last time around. **Chapter 6: The Snowball Effect**


	6. The Snowball Effect

**A/N:** I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho or any of the characters herein, they are all the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. Except Hitoshi the ambassador/diplomat. And Monzan the sprog!

 **Recap:** Hiei came back to his own reality, where he learned Keiko was still bitter about losing Yusuke to demon world, Kuwabara has had his memories erased and Botan fears and hates him.

* * *

 **Chapter 6: The Snowball Effect**

"You look like shit."

"Thanks, bitch."

Mukuro grunted and shook her head, walking on to Koenma's desk. She started a hushed conversation with him, one that Hiei could have listened into if he had felt the inclination to do so, but instead he tried to piece himself back together. The soldiers of the Special Defence Force had taken far too much pleasure in beating into him after his attempted attack on Koenma and somehow in the foray the tattered remains of his shirt had come off of him completely. He picked up a shred of the remains of his shirt and wiped his face with it, probably doing no more than smearing his own blood. He heard the soldiers muttering about the nerve of him spilling his filthy demon blood on their precious Koenma's floor but he ignored it, simply feeling glad that they were leaving at last.

Apparently they were not brave enough to keep up their assault with Mukuro present.

Hiei threw down the piece of his shirt with a splat against the tiled floor. He lifted his head and almost balked at what he saw: a blue ogre was standing over him offering him a tissue. Hiei eyed him over warily before cautiously accepting his offer.

"Why did you do it, Hiei?" the ogre quietly asked him as he wiped at his face.

"That's not your concern," Hiei replied.

The ogre nodded and walked off again. It had seemed quite strange that the ogre had approached him, but when Hiei saw why, he felt even more confused: apparently Botan had sent it over to him. The ogre whispered a few things to Botan who nodded and then rose from Koenma's chair. She walked briskly across the office as though she intended to leave through the doors at Hiei's side but as she reached him she paused.

"I worry about Yukina too," she said quickly.

Hiei opened his mouth to ask her to do something about it but she was gone before he could find his voice. He contemplated going after her but in the time it took him to stand up Mukuro had joined him and was giving him the sort of look that warned him not to follow through with his plan. Going back to demon world with his boss was his second option anyway, he thought, and there he could get her to send him back to the right reality – and this time he would tell her not to bother calling him back, however she had managed to do that this time around.

"Follow me," she instructed.

Hiei dutifully did as she asked, following her from Koenma's office and down a corridor to another room where three Special Defence Force soldiers were holding open a temporary breach in the Kakai Barrier. Hiei tried to contain his interest at what they were doing: he had forgotten that they could create such breaches, and, if he did somehow become permanently stuck in this reality, he now knew a way to leave demon world. Though how he would convince any of those do-gooder soldiers who despised him so much to actually create such a rift for him was another matter entirely.

"I'd still like to know how he got through in the first place," one of the soldiers commented as Mukuro passed them.

Hiei bit back a sarcastic reply, partly because he expected Mukuro to give one herself, but she did not respond at all, as though she had not even heard what had been said. Together they passed through the breach, which closed so quickly behind them Hiei almost lost the fingers of one hand.

"Hn, that was a joke," he snorted as they landed back in demon world proper.

"Which part, Hiei?" Mukuro asked, stopping abruptly and turning on him. "The part where I sent you to an alternate reality that you tried to stay in, the part where you threw a tantrum in the living world and alerted everyone in spirit world to the fact that you had managed to reach that realm, or the part where you forced your way into spirit world and started propositioning a ferry girl?"

Hiei heard everything she said and observed the depth of her sarcasm, but as he was only really interested in the first part of her rant that was all he chose to focus on.

"You knew that I wanted to stay there?" he asked.

"Obviously you did," she snapped back. "When has it ever taken you two days to heal a minor scratch?"

She poked him far harder than was necessary in the abdomen, presumably indicating the wound she had given him when she had sent him into the other reality, though now he had a series of boot-shaped bruises there that made her action hurt and seem slightly redundant.

"I don't understand," he said.

"You can't return until the wound heals," Mukuro explained. "With your healing abilities, I expected you to only be gone for half a day. What happened?"

"I got distracted…" Hiei lied. "And you never told me that my return was dependent on my wound healing. In fact, you never told me anything of any use before you sent me into that other life."

"Would it have changed anything if I had?"

Mukuro walked on, and Hiei hesitated to follow. Considering what she had done to him, he thought she was being very unreasonable and far too sarcastic: but he was in no fit state to argue with her, so with a great effort, he contained his frustration and moved to catch her up.

"Send me back," he said as he rejoined her.

"I intend to," she flatly replied.

"Don't be such a bitch, I just want… Wait, what?"

"I intend to send you back, but not straight away."

Hiei felt even more confused than before, but did not let it show. Mukuro was intending to send him back to the other reality, and that was really all that he cared about: although one thing she had said was still bothering him.

"But it's only temporary?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied. "As soon as the wound heals, you return to your own reality. I have my reasons for using the attack strategically, once you've cleaned yourself up I'll explain them to you."

Hiei pulled a face at her but she did not notice as she kept facing ahead as they walked back through the halls of her fortress.

"…Why can't you just explain them now?" he prompted her.

"It's confidential," she replied. "Go and clean yourself up and come back and see me."

Hiei begrudgingly veered off from Mukuro's side and took himself through to the back of the fortress and outside again. He did not particularly want to waste any time messing about in what was now, in his opinion, the wrong life, and so he leapt into the river fully clothed, immersing himself completely. Washing outdoors in the cold rapids of a river in demon world was not nearly as pleasant as steeping himself into the bath of hot water with Botan in the living world had been, but that was really only another reason to hurry, and so he leapt out of the river and shook himself off, moving quickly back inside, collecting a replacement shirt for the one he had lost in spirit world.

As he returned to Mukuro's office, Hiei silently wondered what was happening in the other reality right then. Presumably, as Kurama had told him ought to happen, the other version of himself had returned. He wondered what had happened to that alternate version of himself over the last two days and what he had done when he had woken up that morning. The bastard was probably still in bed, Hiei thought bitterly. He had probably just offloaded Monzan for the day and was now enjoying his wife.

Hiei punched a fist at a wall as he passed it, creating a sizeable hole, part of the wall crumbling down behind him. He ignored the yells of complaint from the demons in the room beyond and quickened his pace, his need to get back to the other reality increasing. That other Hiei was a sneaky bastard and had no right to be touching his wife like that. If he ever found him, Hiei swore that he would kill him.

By the time he reached Mukuro's office Hiei had worked himself up into a foul mood, and he accordingly kicked down the door and marched in.

"Redecorating again, Hiei?" Mukuro asked him sarcastically as two of her guards picked up the broken door and tried to replace it to its hinges.

"Get to the point," Hiei replied.

Mukuro eyed him over slowly.

"I thought I told you to go clean yourself up," she muttered.

"Hn, stop stalling," he said. "Just send me back. And this time don't bother bringing me back to this place."

Mukuro's face changed, and Hiei sensed that he was not going to like what she was about to say next.

"Whilst I'm pleased that you're eager to continue playing guinea pig in this experiment, I think you need to slow down and think about this," she began.

"I don't do anything slowly," he reminded her.

"Or with any thought," she added. "You have to understand Hiei, the alternate reality you arrive in cannot sustain you because you don't belong there. As soon as your wound heals, you will always return back here."

A small hindrance, Hiei thought to himself, but not a major concern. This time he would just make sure that his wound never healed.

"You're not the first to experience this move," Mukuro continued. "But as you have better healing abilities than anyone I have left here on site – since all my strongest soldiers are out fighting in this mess – you're the best option I have to continue my experiment. I've sent several others to other dimensions, and, not including the first few who failed to return at all, they all reported the same thing when they returned: the ongoing war in demon world was still present in the realities they visited. This war has gone on too long, and obviously isn't going to end until most of us are dead, so I'm trying to find a situation where we can stop it. I'm trying to find a reality where the war has ended or never started, because somebody in such a reality may know how to stop what is happening now."

"Then you'd better stop talking and send me back," Hiei said, smirking to himself. "Because the demon world I visited had never been at war. In that reality, your ambassador stopped it before it began."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?"

Hiei sensed something more was going on by the look on Mukuro's face, but he did not bother questioning her on the matter: she was sending him back and that was really all that he needed to know.

"I'm going to try to send you back," she continued. "And I need you to find out, by whatever means necessary, what was done and said to stop this war, and then when you come back here, we will use that information to stop the war here."

That was a nice idea, Hiei thought, and spending time developing it showed that Mukuro was a good leader who did actually care about the welfare of her people: but she could shove her philosophies up her rectum for all he cared. Maybe he would find out exactly what Hitoshi had done or said to stop the war in the other reality, but he would not ever be returning to his current reality and so he would never be able to report those findings back to Mukuro as she wished.

"Do you understand what I'm asking of you, Hiei?" she asked.

"I understand," he replied.

He did understand after all, he just did not agree or intend to comply with it.

"Then I have just one more thing to say to you before you go," Mukuro said. "It might not always be obvious what has created the reality I send you to, and you may need to think carefully to figure out what that one difference was – because it will all trace back to one difference between that reality and this one. It's something called "the snowball effect" – it starts out as something small, but as it rolls along, it gets bigger. The further back in time the change took place, the bigger and more obvious the differences will be."

"I'm not stupid, don't patronise me," Hiei sneered irritably.

"You're not stupid, I agree," she replied. "But you are thoughtless and impetuous, and this task requires patience and attentiveness. Do you think you can manage that, Hiei?"

Hiei glared at her until she started to smile.

"Alright then," she said, rising to her feet.

"And this time, make sure you hit me like you mean it," he warned her.

"I intend to," she assured him. "The first time I attacked I did it because you wanted to see the attack. Now that I'm doing it for a more sensible reason, I'll need to send you away for a lot longer, so this will hurt."

"Hn, it's nothing I can't handle."

"I thought you might say that."

"Just get on with it!"

Hiei was relieved that Mukuro did not bother trapping him in place with her Dividing Space attack, instead immediately charging her new attack between her hands. It looked as though she was serious about her threat to hit him harder as she was taking longer to charge it and the glow of energy was far more intense this time: but a small amount of physical pain meant nothing to Hiei anyway, and it was especially meaningless if it was his ticket to a better life.

"Good luck, Hiei," Mukuro called out before chopping her hands through the air and sending a cross-shaped energy blast at him.

Hiei closed his eyes and braced himself, grunting involuntarily as the blow hit him, throwing him back through the wall of Mukuro's office, across the hall beyond and through the wall at the other side into an empty storage cupboard, where he finally fell to the ground and skidded to a halt, armour and weaponry clattering down around him.

Hiei pushed aside the fallen items and forced himself to stand, cursing under his breath a few especially explicit phrases as he felt the pain of the wound Mukuro had just given him and was reminded that he was still bruised from his beating in spirit world and now he had just earned himself a few cuts from the sharper items that had fallen on him. He looked down and saw a big red patch in his clothing over his midsection that was wet to the touch: but the amount of blood and even the depth of the wound itself left his mind as he saw what had happened to the rest of his body.

"What the fuck am I wearing?" he yelled out loud, not even caring if anyone heard him.

It was unthinkable: he was dressed like a human.

He had white sneakers on his feet with shoelaces – Hiei had never tied a shoelace in his life – he had on the same sort of pants Yusuke usually wore – he seemed to remember that they were called jeans – he had a white cotton vest on and a gaudy green bomber jacket that was open and had the collar turned up. He smelled strange – like some sort of chemicals had been soaked into his skin. He had no weapons on him but a quick check of his pockets uncovered a plastic comb, a cellular phone – Hiei barely knew what a cellular phone was, and certainly did not know how to operate one – a set of keys and a handful of human money, in both note and coin form.

Why was he dressed like a human and armed like one? Had this been Botan's idea? He had been in his own clothes the day before, and the clothing she had been hanging outside had all looked like his usual clothes, so why had he changed now?

And, Hiei thought darkly, he apparently always arrived in the same location when he moved between realities because, just as he had arrived back in his own reality in the living world, he had now arrived back in the alternate reality in demon world. He was still in the cupboard Mukuro had blasted him into, only there was no hole in the wall where he had entered. He had collided with the armour and weaponry and created the mess in this reality, but everything else was different.

It especially amazed him that, despite now having an X gouged into his stomach that was bleeding steadily, his clothes were undamaged in this reality.

Hiei took a deep breath and moved towards the door, pressing one ear against it to listen for any signs of movement in the hall outside. He was hoping to escape Mukuro's fortress – and indeed demon world itself – unnoticed, as the last thing he needed was Hitoshi seeing "his favourite human sympathiser" dressed as a human.

Once he was sure that there was no-one else around Hiei carefully opened the door and crept out into the hallway. He looked up and down the hall to visually confirm that he was alone and paused long enough to feel for any presences nearby. Thankfully he seemed to be alone: even Mukuro was not in her office, which was perfect. With his knowledge of the back passages of the fortress and his superior speed, he would make his escape unnoticed as he had hoped.

He turned right and started to run towards the back of the fortress, but before he had even reached the end of the hallway he heard distant movement ahead of him and he skidded to a halt, breaking out into a panicked sweat. He contemplated just tearing off all his clothes and confronting whoever was coming naked, since being caught running around Mukuro's fortress naked was far less embarrassing than being seen in human clothes, but he reasoned that it would not be wise to enter the living world completely nude, and so decided against it. Instead he quietly backed up, aiming himself for another room off of the hall that he could conceal himself in temporarily.

Hiei almost made it to his goal, and was sure that his plan would have worked if not for what happened next. Mukuro and three of her top men – men who, in Hiei's own reality, he had not seen since they had been deployed to fight at the beginning of the war – appeared at the end of the hall and something suddenly started making an awful noise around Hiei himself. The noise was bad, Mukuro and her men hearing it and noticing Hiei standing in the middle of the hall in bloodied human clothing was awful but nothing could have prepared Hiei for what happened next: something in the pocket of his jeans started vibrating.

He hurriedly clawed the object out, the noise getting louder as he did so. It was the cellular phone, which was vibrating, flashing and making that awful noise – he realised then that it was playing human music, a song about something to do with butterflies and swordfights – and the flashing panel on the front clearly showed the word "sugar".

"Hiei?" Mukuro called out to him. "What are you doing here?"

Hiei did not hesitate any longer. He threw down the phone, stamped on it to obliterate the sight and sound of it and then turned from Mukuro and her men, taking off at top speed. Going out the front entrance, Hiei passed almost every man and woman in Mukuro's employ, but he did not care. He fled the fortress and its grounds and headed for the border patrol route, the sight of the bug transporters never having looked so good to his eyes as he joined them on the well-worn route they followed.

Soon Hiei reached a portal to the living world and he threw himself through it without a second thought. There was, of course, no Kakai Barrier, and so he passed straight through, landing in a park in the middle of a city. He looked around himself to get his bearings, quickly realising that he was very close to the street Kurama's plant shop was on, and so he decided to visit there first, if only to ask Kurama if he normally dressed like a human and what the other Hiei had been doing in his absence that morning.

Hiei ran at a human pace, since he was dressed as a human and had no need to rush out of sight, splashing through puddles as he went. He quickly soaked through his flimsy footwear, but he did not mind, as the presence of the puddles reminded him of the rain the night before, and that was surely another sign that he was back where he belonged.

Although it had been raining when he had woken up in his own reality too: but there was no Kakai Barrier and no war in demon world, so obviously he was back where he wanted to be. And the sight of a very green shop with display tables that spilled out onto the street brought a smirk of confidence to Hiei's face.

"Oh, hi Hiei!" Kurama's woman greeted him. "Oh my goodness! What happened to you?"

She dropped the bonsai tree in an ornamental pot that she had been marking down to half price, and in a swooping motion Kurama barely caught it before it hit the ground.

"Hiei, you look terrible," he said as he stood up and passed the pot back to his woman. "What happened to you?"

"I was… Sparring with Mukuro," Hiei replied.

Kurama's eyebrows slowly lowered into a frown, his green eyes studying Hiei as though he was trying to decipher something.

"M-Mukuro?" he eventually said. "You went back to demon world?"

"Yes," Hiei replied.

A sense of worry began to creep up on Hiei as Kurama's face twisted further at his words.

"I thought you weren't ever going back there," Kurama said.

Hiei's face dropped and he started to feel just how painful the wound in his abdomen was. He touched a hand to it subconsciously and realised that it had soaked through his clothing quite badly. He needed to get to Botan, he decided, so that she could put another dressing on it for him. Whilst he did not want the wound to heal and send him back to his own reality, it was also impractical for him to walk about bleeding so readily.

And he really needed to get out of the ridiculous human clothing he was inexplicably wearing.

"I have to go home," he said to Kurama.

"Alright," Kurama replied. "We can talk later, perhaps."

Hiei nodded and took one step away but then paused. Something seemed slightly amiss, but he could not quite figure out what.

"Goodbye, Hiei!" Kurama's woman called over to him.

She was still a cheerful and annoyingly human creature, Hiei thought, and Kurama was still Kurama, so perhaps it was just his strange clothes that were making things seem different.

Hiei turned and ran off, moving at almost his usual speed, slowed only slightly by his injury. He left the city and crossed the countryside towards the old lady's temple and his home beyond it. The sight of the temple steps once more sharp, clean and the gate at the top complete helped ease Hiei's concerns about his circumstances and he gladly raced up them, passing the temple, which was also once more returned to its former glory, and into the forest beyond.

Hiei ran around the trees for several minutes before accepting that something was wrong. There was no tree-house in the forest, and there was not even a clearing where the tree-house had been. Confused but not deterred, Hiei ran back to the temple and raced inside it, looking about for any sign of life within. Although the temple did look lived in, there was clearly nobody there at that time, and so Hiei left again, his patience starting to wear thin.

Hiei ran back to the city, intending to take himself back to Kurama to ask what was going on and how it was possible that his house could disappear in just one night, but as he passed through the streets he saw something that made him stop. To his relief, Yukina was back in the living world, dressed in human clothes and looking happy, feeding birds outside of a large building. Hiei started towards her, intending to check on her, but as she caught sight of him he again started to feel that something was not quite right.

"Oh!" she said, looking strangely neutral. "Mister Hiei!"

Her eyes lowered to his wound and she tilted her head slightly.

"Did you have an accident with a knife again?" she asked.

Hiei narrowed his eyes, slowing as he neared her.

"I was on my way home," he said carefully.

"Of course," she said, bowing her head politely. "I'm sorry to have troubled you."

Something was definitely wrong.

"What are you doing in this part of the city?" he asked her.

"Kazuma works in this building, I was just waiting for his lunch-break so that we could dine together," she said. "But if you're on your way home, we'll see you there."

"…Right…" Hiei said slowly.

"I like your scarf," she said, giving him a small, wary smile. "It's very… Green…"

Hiei frowned at her, wondering what was wrong with her. She seemed to be looking at something above his head, and she was behaving very indifferently towards him. He nodded and took off again, touching a hand to his throat as he went.

Hiei stumbled to a halt again. He no longer had anything around his neck. Not even his own hirui stone. And he was not wearing a wedding ring. And, as he lifted his head again, Hiei saw something on the periphery of his vision that made him feel sick. Slowly he turned his head, finding himself facing a reflective shop window that showed his true appearance only too clearly.

Not only was he wearing human clothes, but he had a ridiculous green bandana on that covered not only his forehead but also the entire top of his head. He growled and snatched it off, throwing it aside.

What he saw underneath the bandana was so bad, once he had recovered from his initial horror, Hiei went and collected the discarded bandana and began frantically pulling it back on.

Why, in the name of the three worlds, was his hair lacquered back flat in a quiff that only Yusuke could get away with?

Hiei looked at his reflection again: he looked quite absurd. His green bandana was now squint and barely covering his terrible hairstyle and jagan eye, his vest front was mostly red with blood, his jacket had padded shoulders and a permanently turned up collar, which, on his frame, looked positively ridiculous, his sneakers were scuffed and damaged from him running too fast in them and his jeans had strategically placed deliberate tears in them that he could only guess at the purpose of.

Something was definitely wrong.

Hiei turned to run again but hesitated as he noticed a familiar sign at the other side of the street. He slowly approached it, slightly apprehensive about what he might find there. The sign told him it was Yukimura Restaurant, and in his own reality, it was the place he had found Kuwabara and Keiko, and in the alternate reality it was, according to Botan, the place Yusuke worked. Whatever he found inside the restaurant would answer his questions about the validity of the universe he was in, he decided.

Hiei pushed open the door and stepped into the restaurant, looking around the tables cautiously. There were two men in suits at the table he had found Kuwabara at in his own reality, and there was a group of five teenagers crammed around a table for four at the other end of the floor.

"Hiei!" a voice called out to him.

Hiei turned to the man who had spoken, wondering how he was meant to know him. He was just an average, middle-aged human man, but he seemed oddly pleased to see him.

"Hey, Keiko!" the man called over his shoulder. "Hiei's here!"

Hiei edged into the restaurant, his suspicions rising by the second. Keiko was, apparently, there, but where was Yusuke? And how did that man know his name? He slowly turned around on the spot, trying to take in the details of his surroundings for any clue as to why things were not adding up. His eyes eventually came back to the doors leading into the kitchens, and as he watched them, Keiko pushed them apart and stepped out, smiling at him.

And dressed like a demon world prostitute.

"Hiei!" she cried. "What happened to you? You're bleeding!"

"I'm fine," he quickly said, sliding back a step from her as she started towards him.

"You don't look fine!" she argued. "Let me take a look at that…"

Hiei leapt back, taking himself up onto a table to avoid her as she tried to grab at his vest. She glared up at him, at first looking shocked but then slowly starting to look angry.

"What the hell are you doing, Hiei?" she snapped.

"I was just about to ask you the same thing, Keiko," he growled back.

He leapt off the other side of the table, glaring over it at her.

"I'm trying to get home," he explained.

She tilted her head as though she had not understood him.

"To my woman," he added.

She broke into a smile and moved around to the table towards him. He thought that perhaps she was about to tell him something useful, like where Botan was, but instead she threw her arms around him and squealed almost directly into his ear.

"Oh Hiei, you're so cute!" she cried.

"…What?" he grunted.

"Come on baby, I'll make your favourite lunch for you."

Hiei kept his feet perfectly still even though she had grabbed one of his hands and was apparently trying to pull him into the back of the restaurant with her.

"Hiei!" she said, smiling back at him. "Come on!"

"…I'd rather not…" he replied in a low voice. "Just tell me where Yusuke is."

Keiko dropped his hand and she took on a look that made her seem decidedly less human and distinctly demon.

"What did you just say?" she asked.

"I'm looking for Yu–"

"How dare you say that name in here?"

Hiei was starting to lose his temper.

"Look Keiko, just tell me where Yusuke is!" he demanded.

"You don't have any business with that asshole!" she shouted back.

"I thought he was your lover?" Hiei yelled at her.

"Oh, God, not this again!"

Hiei growled and swiped a hand at the table in front of him, flinging it across the restaurant with ease. He ignored the complaints he got from the man behind the counter and the people at the other tables.

"If you won't tell me where Yusuke is," he ground out slowly. "At least tell me where Botan is."

"Botan?" Keiko roared, looking positively demonic. "Are you trying to piss me off?"

"You're pissing me off, woman!" Hiei retorted. "Where the fuck is Botan?"

"In demon world with Yusuke, you idiot!"

"What? Why the hell would she be in demon world?"

"Because that's where she went when she became a demon, Hiei!"

"Because… She did what?"

Keiko sighed, planting her hands on her hips and rolling her eyes.

"Look, it's over, remember?" she said. "Let's just go upstairs and forget about those two."

Something was definitely wrong, and apparently Keiko was not going to be any more help to him. Hiei turned and fled from the restaurant, tearing off his ridiculous bandana and throwing it aside, trying to ignore his reflection in the shop windows he was passing. He ran until he was more than a mile from the restaurant before scaling a tall building and stopping to use his jagan eye to search for Botan.

However, just like in his own reality, he was unable to locate her. He started looking for Yusuke and was surprised when he shortly found him, in demon world, in what had once been Raizen's tower and looking like he had after he had defeated Sensui: with long, spiked dark hair and body markings.

That was not how Yusuke looked in Hiei's own reality or the reality he was meant to be in.

"Fuck," he sighed.

* * *

Hiei stopped at the entrance to Yusuke's tower, partly because he was hurting, partly because he had worn right through his stupid shoes and partly because the guards there had moved into his path to halt his progress.

"Get out of my way," he warned them. "I need to speak with Yusuke."

"I don't think so," one of them replied.

Hiei did not have the patience to negotiate with the guards, but he was also unarmed, injured and conscious that, for some very strange reason, the guards were among the strongest demons in Yusuke's territory, which seemed like overkill.

"Just tell Yusuke that I'm here," he insisted.

"Look Hiei, we're doing you a favour keeping you out," one of the guards said.

Hiei slowly eyed the demon over, wondering how he knew his name.

"I have to talk to Yusuke," he said. "Right now. If you don't step aside, I will cut you down where you stand."

The two guards looked at each other in curious amusement, and Hiei reasoned he could guess why: he had no weapon to cut them down with since, in this reality, he had apparently left his sword somewhere – possibly in the same place he had left his hiruiseki, he mused.

"Okay, fine. You may pass."

Hiei could not hide the surprise and the scepticism from his face at the guard's words, but as both demons stepped aside he did not bother waiting around to question them. Instead he kicked off the worn out remains of his shoes and ran into the tower grounds at full speed, checking over his shoulder that he was not going to be shot in the back as he approached the tower itself. However his concerns were unfounded and he made it into the tower without question. He could sense that Yusuke was near the top of the tower and so he sought out the nearest staircase and hurried up it, all the while wondering exactly what he was going to find when he got there: although he had already seen, through his jagan eye, that Yusuke looked different, he still felt that there was something else changed about Yusuke other than just his appearance.

At the top of the stairs Hiei found only one room, a sparse throne room of some sorts, and, as he had already foreseen, Yusuke was sat facing the open door. Hiei stepped through the doorway and stopped just inside the room, partly because he could sense something he really did not like and partly because Yusuke was looking directly at him in a way he had not seen him do since their very first meeting when they had been pitted against each other.

"Well, well," Yusuke said. "You've got some nerve coming here, you little son of a bitch."

It was not the greeting Hiei had been expecting, but although Yusuke's tone had been quite threatening, he had not moved from his seat or powered up any, so Hiei tried to remain calm.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. "Why aren't you back in the living world?"

Yusuke slowly stood up, his face darkening and the air changing as he powered up slightly. Hiei's brief idea that the situation would not turn ugly left his mind and he silently wondered if there was something to be said for learning the art of diplomacy after all. He had never cared for the sort of fancy words and sleight of hand tactics that Kurama employed in tense situations, but he was beginning to think that maybe there were times when it was wrong to rush into things aggressively.

"You know damn well why I'm here," Yusuke said in a low voice. "But in case you forgot, let me remind you: I'm here because of you."

"What?" Hiei echoed.

He could not imagine any situation where he would have forced Yusuke to choose life in demon world over life in the living world and nor could he imagine any situation where Yusuke would have submitted to any such demand on his part.

"You look ridiculous," Yusuke added, purposefully raking his eyes over Hiei. "And it looks like I don't even need to kick your ass, since apparently somebody got there before me."

"I agree," Hiei replied. "I do look ridiculous. Isn't this the way you dressed when you lived in the human world?"

Yusuke smirked at his response, but the slight rise in his energy warned Hiei that his words had not been taken lightly.

"So you just came here to get your ass kicked?" Yusuke asked him. "Well, obviously you did. You've come unarmed, you're deliberately provoking me and you're not even fit to fight back. Normally I wouldn't waste my time on something so pathetic, but when it comes to you Hiei, what can I say? I just never get tired of punching your face."

Hiei tensed himself defensively. He wished then that he was not wearing such restrictive clothing, but he was still confident that he could stand up to Yusuke regardless, and so he pushed the thought from his mind.

"I'm not here to see you," he said. "I'm looking for my wife."

Apparently, Hiei thought dryly, he had just said something else inappropriate, because Yusuke's face contorted with rage and he flew across the room at him. Hiei avoided Yusuke's fist by a very narrow margin but was not quick enough to avoid his knee as he drove it upwards. Hiei contained a groan as the blow collided hard with his already trying wound in his abdomen, and he was silently relieved when Yusuke leapt back and did not try to continue attacking.

"You've gone soft," he scoffed. "It's pathetic. You're not only living in the human world, you dressing, walking, talking and acting like a human, and you're starting to become just as weak as one. I bet even Kuwabara could kick your ass these days."

Hiei could have accepted the accusation of dressing like a human since it was true of his current state: but he could not accept being called as weak as a human and nor could he forgive the insult that Yusuke thought Kuwabara could best him in a fight. Logic and purpose gone from his mind, Hiei launched himself at Yusuke, who flashed him a grin before gladly rising to the challenge of a fight.

And it really was a fight, Hiei thought, as Yusuke began attacking with all his strength, aiming to inflict serious damage rather than the more restrained manoeuvres of a mere sparring session.

After a matter of seconds of exchanging blows with Yusuke, Hiei started to realise one other thing that was decidedly different about the reality he was in. Now, for some entirely inexplicable reason, the power difference between himself and Yusuke was quite noticeable. Yusuke was easily matching him on speed and agility, which was frustrating but not shocking, but in terms of strength, Yusuke was outmatching him significantly. Hiei simply could not hit back as hard as Yusuke was hitting him, and whereas his blows were doing little more than cause a few potential bruises on Yusuke, each one of Yusuke's blows were almost enough on their own to take Hiei off his feet, and as he managed to block one with his arm he distinctly heard and felt a bone cracking under the strain.

The problem was twofold: in this reality, Yusuke was using all of his strength to attack and for no apparent reason Hiei's offensive and defensive capabilities were substantially lower than usual. Hiei quickly realised – as hard as it was for him to actually accept – that he would not last long in a fight this intense. He tried to justify his own weaknesses in his mind, blaming them on the fact that his body was still recovering from being beaten by the spirit world Special Defence Force soldiers and Mukuro's Dividing Realities attack: but deep down he knew that, even if he had approached the fight at his peak physical condition, he would be no better off.

Reluctantly, Hiei lowered his defences and let Yusuke strike him in the face with a direct hit that sent him flying across the room and into a wall. The wall cracked and crumbled but Hiei did not pass fully through it. He quickly sat up amongst the rubble, checking that Yusuke was not going to continue before daring to speak again.

"If you're not going to tell me where my wife is, can you at least tell me where my boy is?" he asked.

"You're what?" Yusuke echoed.

"Monzan!" Hiei snapped. "Where the fuck is Monzan?"

"Monzan?" Yusuke said, pronouncing the name as though it was a foreign word he had never encountered before. "Never mind where the fuck is Monzan, who the fuck is Monzan?"

Hiei growled, gripping his hands into the broken stonework around him, which quickly broke down into merely clouds of dust in his fists.

"My son!" he roared.

Yusuke looked momentarily shocked to the point of looking quite innocent and benign. But then his face changed and Hiei once more wished he had Kurama's gift for choosing his words more carefully – though he could not understand what he had said wrong this time. Yusuke tensed and started towards him, looking as though he would not be satisfied until he had taken Hiei's life.

"Fuck," Hiei muttered.

* * *

 **Next Chapter** : Hiei finally reached Botan, but he receives a nasty shock that confirms he is in a completely different reality to his own and the one he was trying to return to. Back in the living world good old Kurama talks him through the differences that brought that reality about. Back in his own reality, Hiei learns something nearly incomprehensible about Kurama. **Chapter 7: Just Play Along**


	7. Just Play Along

**A/N:** I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho or any of the characters herein, they are all the property of Yoshihiro Togashi. Except Hitoshi the ambassador/diplomat. And Monzan the sprog!

 **Recap:** Mukuro sent Hiei to another alternate reality, and in it he appeared to have replaced Yusuke in lifestyle, including the punk hairdo and having Keiko as a girlfriend. He went to demon world and learned that Yusuke genuinely hated him.

* * *

 **Chapter 7: Just Play Along**

Whilst Hiei enjoyed the challenge of a fight, he was not enjoying the fact that he had been beaten down three times in one day, as it was starting to make him feel pathetic. It was almost as though Yusuke's comments about him being as weak as a human and weaker than Kuwabara were close to being true, and that was just unacceptable.

"Lucky for you I won't take this any further," Yusuke told him.

Hiei almost wished that he would. Death was at least more honourable than being left nursing his own wounds in the corner of the room like a weak little animal.

"But now that we've got that out of the way, how about you tell me the real reason why you're here?" Yusuke continued. "You haven't come to demon world in years, why the sudden interest now?"

"Years?" Hiei said.

"Yeah years, Hiei," Yusuke replied. "It probably doesn't seem that long to you, since I guess life for you is so great the time just flies by, but trust me, it has been years."

"That doesn't make any sense."

Hiei was beyond the point of containing his own confusion. How could the altered reality have changed so much in just one morning? Had his previous visit there somehow corrupted it? Or was it his return to his own reality that had ruined things?

"I just need to see Botan," he said.

"What?" Yusuke barked, his voice echoing around his throne room.

"I need to see Botan," Hiei repeated.

He doubted that Yusuke had misheard him, but his words were a reflection of the only coherent thought he had right then and so he had been unable to stop himself from repeating them.

"Why the hell would you want to see Botan?" Yusuke asked. "You hate Botan! You've always hated Botan!"

Hiei pushed aside the debris around him and dragged himself to his feet.

"Just tell me where she is," he said. "I don't care about anything else right now."

Yusuke glared at him menacingly.

"What is this, ticket to the freak show?" he asked.

"…What?" Hiei responded.

"Didn't find it amusing enough the first time around, is that it?" Yusuke asked, his voice quieter but somehow far more threatening. "You need to see it again, huh? You want to point and laugh again, like you did before? It's not funny you know. Botan used to have a mind of her own. Okay so she was a nag, an idiot and sometimes she was just a plain old pain in the ass, but, unlike you and Keiko, Botan was always loyal to me! I did what I thought was best, I had no idea it would end up like that!"

Hiei twitched. That strange aura he had been sensing since approaching Yusuke's room started to bother him again. He had tried to ignore it, but now he was starting to worry that it meant something every bit as sinister as he had feared that it might.

"Alright then, fine," Yusuke sighed.

Hiei blinked and tilted his head curiously, watching as Yusuke marched across the room towards the door.

"Well come on then, half-pint!" he yelled back at Hiei.

"Hn, idiot," Hiei muttered, following after him.

"You realise this is completely pointless?" Yusuke asked him as they walked along a strange, narrow corridor that seemed to connect the top of the tower with another tower.

"You don't understand," Hiei plainly replied.

"Neither do you, you ignorant little bastard," Yusuke grumbled.

Hiei let the insult pass without retaliating, mainly because he was in no state to get into another fight. Instead he followed Yusuke quietly to the conclusion of the corridor, where they reached another room similar to the one they had just left. Yusuke unlocked the door to the room and opened it, grabbing a handful of Hiei's jacket and dragging him forwards. Hiei tried to shrug off his hold as he stumbled helplessly forwards, but Yusuke held on until he had dragged Hiei clear through the doorway, only then releasing him.

"Since you think it's so damn funny, why don't you stay in here for a little while and see what I've had to deal with for the last ten years!"

Yusuke slammed the door shut and Hiei heard him lock it into place. Hiei was still confident that he could break the door down if he needed to, even in his weakened and worn out state and so he did not let the fact that he had been locked into the room bother him. He slowly turned around, looking about himself at his unusual surroundings. This room, unlike the one Yusuke had been sat in, looked more lived in. It was still quite bare, but there was a sort of bed by one wall, an empty tray of food dishes in the middle of the floor and a half-empty bucket of water by a small window.

And there was a single figure knelt facing the wall at the back of the room.

Hiei closed his eyes and held his breath, prolonging his moment of denial as long as he possibly could. He had heard Keiko telling him that Botan was a demon, he had sensed the strange demonic energy near the top of Yusuke's tower and he had seen the look on Yusuke's face when he had mentioned Botan's name: but he had ignored all the signs in the desperate hope that they were somehow misleading, and that he would not find what he had feared in the room he was locked into.

When Hiei opened his eyes again and once more saw the figure knelt by the wall, he knew that he could deny it no longer: somehow the unthinkable had happened and now he was going to be made to confront it.

"Botan," he said.

At first, she did not respond to his voice. She had not responded to Yusuke opening the door and shoving him into the room, so he supposed it was not really unusual that she was not responding now either. She kept perfectly still, facing the wall, on her knees, dressed in fine demon world clothing that contradicted her hair, which was loose, wild and very unkempt about her head and shoulders.

"Botan," he said again.

He started to cross the room but stopped after only a few steps as she suddenly got to her feet. She paused before turning around, and during that brief pause on her part Hiei enjoyed his last moment of blissful denial about what had become of her. Once she was facing him, however, he could no longer deny anything, as the evidence was plainly visible in front of him.

Botan had become a demon.

And it was not a good thing. The only logical explanation Hiei could think of for what saw was that someone had attacked Botan with the Shadow Sword. She looked almost the same as she usually did but for the newly acquired and barely functional jagan eye she now had in her forehead. Her hair was wild and her eyes were dull, dilated and unfocused. She was a demon, but she was a very weak, virtually mindless one, presumably a mere slave to whoever had made her the way she was.

"Botan?" Hiei said, daring to take another step closer to her.

If she could remember who she was and what she had been, there was still hope, he told himself. He could tolerate her being a weak and very low class demon if she at least still understood that she was his wife – which was more than she did in his own reality. She started to walk towards him and Hiei knew immediately that she was beyond salvation. Her movements were awkward and clumsy and suggested that she was nothing without guidance from whoever had made her the way she was. If it had been the Shadow Sword that had changed her there was still hope: there was an antidote in the hilt of the sword that could cure her, after all.

"Botan, do you remember me?" he tried asking her.

She mumbled out a nonsensical reply that could have been in an alien language as far as Hiei was concerned. She had literally become a mindless drone – which was slightly ironic in Hiei's mind, as he had always considered her a mindless drone in his own reality before being shown otherwise by Mukuro's Dividing Realities attack. Unless he could cure her, there was no hope for Botan in her current state.

And, remembering something else Yusuke had said, Hiei finally accepted the one thing he had been trying not to confront in his own mind: Mukuro had successfully sent him to an alternate reality from his own, but it was not the same alternate reality that she had sent him to before. Yusuke had said that Botan was something he "had to deal with for the last 10 years", which meant that she had been living as a demon for that length of time, and therefore could not have married Hiei when she was meant to have; which also meant that Monzan did not exist in this reality either.

So, Hiei thought, apart from Yukina being free and there being no war or Kakai Barrier, this reality was no better than his own. In fact, as far as Botan and Hiei himself were concerned, it was worse, because she was living as a powerless, mindless demon and he was inexplicably trying to live as a human.

There was no point staying where he was, he decided. He was no better off there, and Botan was certainly a lot worse off and so he decided to return to his own reality. He doubted he could ask Botan to heal his wound for him as she would probably not remember how to or even be able to any more. That left him with two options: he could go and immerse himself in a healing tank in Mukuro's territory or he could go back to the living world and ask Yukina for help. Going into the healing tank was the quickest and most sensible option, but curiosity got the better of him and Hiei decided to go to Yukina instead. He reasoned that, since he was where he was, he might as well find out why this other reality had come about, and the best place to get that answer was from Kurama, who was back in the living world. He decided to get his answers from Kurama and then get Yukina's help to return to his own reality, where he intended to lose his temper with Mukuro for messing him about.

He had been expecting to be back in the arms of his loving wife – sending him to a reality where she was a miserable, brain-dead excuse for a demon was just plain insulting on Mukuro's part.

"I didn't do this to you," he told Botan. "I don't know who did, but it wasn't me. This isn't the right reality, but it's not my fault."

Hiei felt a little guilty about leaving her as she was, but once he got back to the other reality – the one where she was his wife – everything would be alright again. And with that thought, Hiei broke his way out of her room and fled Yusuke's tower.

The wound that had sent him to the reality he was now in was far worse than the wound that had sent him to the utopia reality, which probably meant that he would be stuck there for a lot longer than two days if he could not get help. The last time the wound had taken a lot longer for him to heal than a similar amount of damage would normally have done, and he worried that maybe his wound this time around would only heal with time, leaving him stranded where he was for several days.

Back in the living world Hiei went first to Kurama's shop, where at least one thing had continued as it was meant to, with Kurama and his woman tending to the plants and looking as they ought to.

"Hiei!" Kurama said as he caught sight of him. "You look worse than before! What happened?"

"I went to see Botan," Hiei replied. "Yusuke wasn't happy to see me."

"Well he never is," Kurama said, a hint of remorse passing over his eyes as he spoke.

"Tell me what happened to Botan," Hiei said, ignoring Kurama's words. "Who did that to her?"

Kurama tilted his head to one side so suddenly and so extremely Hiei almost found his actions amusing.

"…I'm sorry…" he said slowly. "I'm just surprised that you care. I'm also surprised that you need to ask that. Did you forget, or did you just not notice before now?"

"That's not important," Hiei said impatiently. "Just tell me what happened."

"Yusuke used the Shadow Sword on Botan when she was in her human body, and it turned her into a demon," Kurama replied.

"Why has nobody used the antidote to change her back?"

"It didn't work. We don't know why. But for your own sake Hiei, I don't recommend that you talk about Botan any more."

Hiei gave up on tact as his anger flared.

"She's my fucking wife, I'll talk about her if I want to!" he snapped. "She's the mother of my son, for fuck's sake!"

Kurama looked about himself before grabbing a handful of the back of Hiei's jacket and dragging him away from the shop-front. Hiei cursed at him and tried to struggle free, but the fox demon was holding on surprisingly tightly, and his struggles only tore the seams of his jacket.

"Hiei, you don't seem yourself today," Kurama said quietly once he had dragged Hiei comfortably out of earshot of anyone in and around his shop.

"I'm not myself!" Hiei snapped back. "I came here from another reality, I just want to know why this reality is the way it is!"

"Another reality?" Kurama echoed. "Did you steal a spirit world treasure to do this?"

Hiei started to call Kurama an especially offensive and explicitly descriptive name but stopped halfway through as another idea occurred to him.

"There's a device in spirit world that allows for travel between realities?" he asked.

"I don't know," Kurama replied with a shrug. "It was just my first guess at how you had achieved inter-reality travel."

Hiei rolled his eyes and groaned.

"Mukuro sent me here," he explained. "But that's not important. I just need to know why Botan didn't marry me."

"…Botan married you in your own reality?" Kurama asked sceptically.

"No," Hiei replied. "But she did in another reality. She was supposed to marry me after I rescued her from the rock monster."

"The rock monster? What rock monster?"

"…There wasn't a rock monster in this reality?"

"Not that I recall. When did we encounter it in your reality?"

"When we were hunting down that malcontent who complained about control of demon world being split after Enki's death."

"Oh, I see. Then no, that didn't happen in this reality. We did hunt down that demon and you killed him."

"…I didn't kill him, Yusuke did."

"No, Yusuke was checking the mountain village at the time you killed the defector."

"That's the difference? Yusuke went to the mountain village and I went through the forest? That doesn't explain anything!"

"I don't really understand what you need explaining."

Hiei paused for long enough to quell the urge to yell uncontrollably at Kurama before answering him.

"I need to understand why Botan is not married to me," he said carefully. "After I saved her from the rock monster, she was supposed to marry me, and we were supposed to go and live in a tree-house."

Kurama frowned heavily.

"That sounds ridiculous," he eventually said.

"It is ridiculous," Hiei agreed. "But it's also glorious. And I need to get back to that point. Why didn't that happen here?"

"Perhaps because in this reality, you've been in a relationship with Keiko for over ten years."

"Right, so the reason why I…"

Hiei fell silent as he realised what Kurama had just said to him.

"I've been doing what for over ten years?" he asked.

"Keiko," Kurama replied. "You've been in a relationship with Keiko for over ten years. Ever since the night we all gathered at Genkai's temple before we set off on that mission you day you saw a rock monster on in your own reality."

"That night…?"

"Yes. As I recall, it started when Keiko found out that Yusuke was returning to demon world on that mission, and she became angry that he had not told her as much beforehand. She accused him of spending more time in demon world than he did being her boyfriend."

Hiei had really never cared for Keiko, least of all when she was yelling at Yusuke, but suddenly he wished he had paid her more attention. The only person he had ever overlooked more than Keiko had been Botan. Perhaps there was a message hidden in there somewhere, he wondered, about the importance of noticing people and what they did and said. Or perhaps he was just getting confused.

"She said that Yusuke had probably spent more time with Botan than he had with her in the last few years," Kurama continued. "Botan asked to be left out of their feud, so Keiko took a slightly different approach: she asked Yusuke how he would feel if she spent all her time with you."

Hiei stiffened, a sense of déjà vu rising within him. He could remember something involving Keiko the night before that damn stupid mission, but he could not really remember the earlier part Kurama had been describing. He could however remember Keiko approaching him as he sat out on the porch away from the others. She had sat next to him and said something about Yusuke irritating her and she had asked him to "just play along" with something she wanted to do. Hiei had, of course, told her that he never "played" with anything, and then told her, quite frankly, to get the fuck away from him.

"She went and sat next to you," Kurama continued. "And after some whispering between the two of you, you kissed her."

"No I did not!" Hiei argued.

"Perhaps not in your reality, but you certainly did in this one," Kurama replied. "And when you did, you and Yusuke became bitter rivals. He was terribly jealous and in his anger at Keiko's betrayal, he tried to start a relationship with Botan. He took every opportunity he could to get her alone with him, including going to that mountain village with her. She was not really interested, as she was mostly upset that Keiko became so attached to you and it was hurting Yusuke. Eventually Yusuke used the Shadow Sword on Botan to make her a demon, and she became the way she is now. Nobody really knows if Botan wanted to become a demon or not, but that's the situation. You stayed with Keiko and you live here now, as I do, playing the role of a human."

"I don't "play" at anything!" Hiei roared. "Especially not another man's woman or pretending to be a human!"

"…In this reality you do."

"Well fuck this reality! I'm going home!"

"That's probably best. The Hiei I know has become a lot calmer and gentler than you are."

"Oh fuck the Hiei you know, he's obviously a completely useless bastard!"

Hiei opened his jagan eye long enough to locate his sister, cursing out loud again when he saw that she was in Yukimura Restaurant with Kuwabara and Keiko. He did not want to have to deal with any of those idiots, but he was equally desperate to get out of this reality, so he ran to the restaurant and barged his way inside, sitting down at their table without preamble and lifting up his vest to reveal his wound to them.

"I need this healed," he said.

"Hiei!" Keiko screamed. "What happened to you?"

Hiei ignored her, turning fully to his sister.

"I need this healed," he said again.

"Would it kill you to say please, Hiei?" Kuwabara asked him.

Hiei turned to tell the human where he could shove his advice but found himself unable to speak as he saw that the Kuwabara of this reality looked the same as he did in Hiei's own reality, down to the pointless facial hair and bad suit. He did briefly wonder why that was, but he did not actually care, so did not bother wasting time thinking about it for long.

"Mister Hiei, that is quite a terrible wound you have," Yukina said. "I'll do my best for you, but I'm not sure it will be enough."

Hiei nodded and watched the wound as Yukina placed her hands over it and began administering her healing magic. If she was unable to heal it completely, he planned to go and sleep in a tree somewhere until his own natural defences had finished the job. But, as he watched, he saw the wound drying out and the redness fading, making it seem as though he would soon be back in his own reality. He started preparing the lecture he intended to give Mukuro on her uselessness for failing to send him to the correct place, a few choice sarcastic put-downs arising in his mind and almost making him want to smile.

"That's the best I can do, I'm afraid."

Hiei's head snapped up. Yukina had stopped, and he was still looking at her, Kuwabara in a cheap suit with annoying facial hair and Keiko in an outfit that she ought to be ashamed to be wearing outside of her own bedroom.

"Fuck," Hiei grunted.

He looked down at his wound again and saw that it had almost entirely gone, except for a small red mark where the centre of the cross had been. He vaguely remembered that it had healed that way the last time too, and one night's sleep had been enough to bring him back after that, so he resorted to his plan of finding a tree to sleep in. Ignoring Keiko's complaints he got to his feet and walked to the door of the restaurant, opening it and stepping outside.

"Hey, watch it, asshole!"

Hiei froze, glaring at the human man suddenly standing directly in front of him.

"Get out of my way, you stupid dwarf!" the man yelled into his face.

Hiei easily sent the man flying with one flick of his wrist and he started to walk on, only to hear three more men running towards him apparently seeking to avenge their friend.

"I don't have time for this," he grumbled.

Hiei punched them all down as they reached him. He did not even need to make physical contact to repel them as they were so much weaker than he was, but he was quite enjoying the feeling of sinking his fists into their faces. Once he had flattened them all Hiei turned to run back to the old lady's temple, deciding that it was the best place to find a tree to sleep peacefully in, but as he did so, he suddenly sensed something watching him.

Hiei slowly looked up, making a small noise of surprise as he sighted a single spirit world Special Defence Force soldier on a rooftop watching him. What were those idiots doing in the living world in this reality?

Hiei looked down at himself. He was once more in his own clothes, with two hiruiseki around his neck and an empty sheath hanging at his hip. He turned to look into the window of Yukimura Restaurant and he saw that Kuwabara, Yukina and Keiko were no longer there.

He was back in his own reality, and, just like the last time he had returned, he had been brought back to exactly the same location he had been at in the other reality.

Hiei looked up again. The soldier was gone. Hiei turned around and ran. Apparently he was about to be forced to repeat the nonsense he had endured the last time he had appeared in the living world in his own reality.

Which, when he thought about it, had only been a few hours earlier that very same day.

* * *

The shop Hiei had destroyed in his anger that morning was still in pieces just as he had left it. Police barriers had been erected to keep pedestrians out, but otherwise it was untouched. It was not good to be reminded of that moment and why he had done what he had there, but Hiei was also slightly glad to see the wrecked shop because it confirmed that he was back in his own reality.

He crept on down the street, looking about the rooftops, trees and skies around him. He had managed to escape the Special Defence Force soldier who had been tracking him, but he knew that the others could not be far behind, and he did not want them dragging him back to spirit world and subjecting him to the sight of his own wife in the arms of that incompetent jackass Koenma. And, as long as he kept himself emerged in the thick of the human populace, the soldiers would not dare approach him. He ideally needed to find a human he could follow around and he supposed that he could do just that if he located Kuwabara, but he did not want to have to deal with a Kuwabara who could not even remember him. And a Kuwabara who also looked even more stupid and ugly than Hiei remembered him to.

Hiei reached halfway along the street before his luck ran out. There were no humans in sight, and a curly haired female officer of the Special Defence Force had just landed at the end of the street ahead of him.

"Fuck," he muttered.

She started to run towards him but then suddenly leapt out of sight, hiding herself behind a car parked by the side of the road. Hiei suspected that she was trying to set him up for a trap that she had set up with her fellow officers and he was shortly relieved when he learned otherwise: she was not hiding to lure him into a trap but rather she was hiding because a human had just exited a building close to where Hiei was still standing. The human woman moved out to the edge of the road and looked up and down it as though searching for something. She was, in Hiei's eyes, just another human woman: her hair had faded with age and was streaked with white, but she was not quite so old that she moved like an elderly human. Hiei turned his attention from her to check for any sign of the hidden Special Defence Force soldier. When he turned his attention back to the human, he suddenly found her staring at him with a look of surprise and joy.

"Hiei?" she called out to him.

"Oh fuck, what now?" Hiei muttered irritably.

"Hiei?" she called again, starting to slowly walk towards him. "Is that you?"

Hiei let her approach him, finding that, on closer inspection, she was vaguely familiar to him.

"It's me," she said, pressing a hand to her chest and smile sadly. "Shiori Minamino, Shuichi's mother."

Hiei kept his next curse contained.

"I was just on my way to see my son," she said, her eyes watering slightly. "Would you like to come with me? Shuichi didn't have many friends, you were the only one who visited him regularly. It would mean so much to me – and to Shuichi – if you would come with me."

Out of respect for Kurama, Hiei decided that he would politely refuse Shiori's offer. He tried to think how one went about politely refusing an offer – or indeed how one went about politely saying anything, since he had never tried to say something politely before in his entire life – but as he was thinking of what to say he noticed that a second Special Defence Force soldier was lurking by the end of the street and he abruptly changed his mind.

"Alright," he told Shiori. "Let's go see Shuichi."

She nodded, frowning slightly at his ripped shirt but apparently not caring enough to mention it as she then moved back to the edge of the road. Hiei joined her there as a car approached them, apparently to take them to wherever Shiori thought Kurama was. Hiei got into the back of the car with her, all the while thinking about how surreal it was that he was about to visit the grave of a human body that had once housed the soul of Youko Kurama. It was awkward, humiliating and downright ridiculous: but it was infinitely preferable to going back to spirit world and watching Koenma put his hands on Botan, and so Hiei stayed still and silent throughout the journey.

After about half an hour of occasionally spotting Special Defence Force soldiers tracking him at a distance, Hiei followed Shiori out of the car. She paid the driver and Hiei ran his eyes over the bizarre building they had arrived at. It did not look like the typical shrine human graveyards were usually built around, and the land around it looked more like a park than the typical gardens of a shrine.

"It's been difficult, all this time," Shiori said to him as they climbed the steps to the building entrance. "But I'm so glad that you're here. I haven't seen you in years. I think having you here will make all the difference. Thank you so much for coming with me."

Hiei nodded but said nothing. The inside of the building was even more confusing than the outside had been. There were wide, long hallways leading off in ahead of them and to either side of them and there was an abundance of people dressed in white coats and dresses walking about. He followed Shiori to a large desk, where she told the woman sat there that they had come to visit Shuichi Minamino.

"Of course," the woman at the desk replied. "The cafeteria at the end of the hall here."

The woman pointed to her left and Shiori nodded.

"Come on Hiei," she said.

Hiei nodded again and followed her along the hallway. As he walked, Hiei wondered why he was still following her. He was in a place with so many humans he could easily sneak away without the Special Defence Force soldiers attacking and besides, all that he was likely to find from following Shiori was an urn of ashes.

Shuichi Minamino was dead, after all.

Or was he?

Hiei realised then that he had no idea what had become of the human Shuichi after Kurama had chosen to leave his body and return to demon world. He had always assumed that the body had died without Kurama's soul to preserve it, but Kurama had also once said something about Shuichi's soul still existing within the human body, and that they had shared the body and this was reason why his personality in his human form had been gentler – though Kurama's soul had been the stronger and dominant one, meaning that although he had been influenced by Shuichi's presence, he was still essentially Kurama.

So what did that mean for Shuichi now?

Hiei entered a large dining hall and found the answer to his question.

"Shuichi!" Shiori said, waving a hand in the air.

"Mother," a familiar voice answered.

Across the restaurant, sat alone at a table by the window, was a very familiar human man with long red hair and big green eyes. Hiei stayed two steps behind Shiori as together they crossed the room towards Shuichi. He was holding a book, and as they got closer to his table he reached his hand into his hair, a move that made Hiei jerk involuntarily, his defences naturally kicking in as he saw what he had learned to be a sign of Kurama drawing a weapon: but Shuichi merely pulled a bookmark from his hair, placing it between the pages and closing the book over. He placed the book down in the centre of the table and stood up to hug his mother in greeting.

As Shiori squeezed her son, Hiei looked down at the book Shuichi had been reading: it was about trees.

"And look who I brought with me!" Shiori said, stepping aside and holding out a hand to Hiei.

Shuichi moved his eyes to Hiei and his soft smile widened slightly.

"Hiei," he said.

Hiei balked at the sound of the human saying his name.

"It's been a long time," Shuichi continued. "How are you?"

"…Good," Hiei eventually answered.

Shuichi nodded, pulling out a chair for his mother to sit into. He sat down at her side and Hiei moved over to sit opposite him at the other side of the table. They sat in silence at first, during which time Shuichi looked across the table at Hiei with that slight smile Kurama had often worn around him. Looking at Shuichi now, he was almost imperceptible from the human Kurama Hiei had known 10 years before. His hair was the same length and style as it had been during their time together with Yusuke and Kuwabara, his expression and stance were the same and even his mannerisms were the same. There was a slight difference around his eyes and mouth: the outer edges of his features had creased slightly with age and he was not quite so slender and lithe as he had been: but otherwise he was identical to the Kurama of 10 years before.

"You look a little dishevelled, Hiei," he said, indicating Hiei's torn shirt with a wave of his hand. "Have you been sparring with Mukuro again?"

Hiei swallowed hard, wondering how to even begin answering a question the man in front of him had no right knowing the meaning of.

"Shuichi, we've been through this already," Shiori said gently. "Mukuro doesn't exist, remember?"

Shuichi turned to her and smiled, touching a hand to her arm.

"It's alright, mother," he assured her. "Hiei understands what I'm talking about."

"Shuichi, please," she begged, tears forming in her eyes again. "Hiei's just a young man, like you. He's not a demon from another world."

Shuichi patted her arm.

"Let me get you some tea," he offered.

She nodded and opened out her purse, pulling out a handful of tissues to dab at her eyes.

"Hiei, perhaps you would be so kind as to lend me a hand?" Shuichi said as he rose from the table.

Hiei did not hesitate. He followed Shuichi to a big machine at the top of the room expectantly.

"I've been here since Kurama left me to return to demon world," he quietly explained as he began pressing buttons on the machine. "My mother thinks I'm crazy. I wasn't always present or aware of the things Kurama was doing when he was in my body, and I didn't realise that he lied to his own mother about what he really was. I thought, because they were so close, that she knew the truth. I made the mistake of talking to her about some of the things Kurama had seen and done, and she took me to this hospital where I was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia. I was starting to believe that the diagnosis was true. I thought that perhaps I had imagined it all. Thank goodness you arrived."

Hiei glared at the man next to him, barely believing what he was hearing.

"I thought you died when Kurama left you," he said.

Shuichi looked at him long enough to give him another of those smiles that took him back in time before returning his attention to the machine in front of them.

"I sometimes think that I might as well have," he replied. "I'm not as smart as Kurama was. I'm not as learned or as instinctively intellectual as he was. I lack his control, his calm, his unique understanding of everything around him. I didn't want him to leave."

"Neither did I," Hiei muttered.

Shuichi smiled and passed Hiei a plastic cup of tea.

"I'm pleased to see you, Hiei," he said. "Though I am surprised to see you too. I thought that you had been banned from visiting the living world."

"It's a long story," Hiei grumbled, before gulping down some of his tea.

Hiei slowly lowered the cup, quirking an eyebrow at Shuichi.

"Black with two sugars," Shuichi said.

Hiei nodded.

"You can remember everything?" he asked. "Everything that Kurama did when he was in your body?"

"Most of it," Shuichi replied, setting aside a cup of tea for himself. "Some of it I blocked out because it was too much for a weaker soul like mine to deal with. I don't remember much about the more crucial battles Kurama fought in, but I remember most other things. I remember everyone's names, what they looked like and how they were with each other and with Kurama."

"…This just keeps getting more fucked up…" Hiei muttered, before finishing his drink.

"So why are you in the living world, Hiei?"

"It was an accident, and now I can't get back to demon world because of the Kakai Barrier."

"The Kakai Barrier is back up?"

"Yes."

"I see. Quite the conundrum. I would have suggested that you ask Koenma for assistance as he would probably be able to find a way through the barrier for you, but as I recall, he was the reason you were banned from the living world to begin with."

"Oh fucking hell!"

Hiei sighed and turned away from Shuichi. He did not have the energy to get angry but equally he was tired of being made to relive his stupid mistake with regards to saving Botan from the rock monster.

"Kurama forgave you," Shuichi said behind him. "Sometimes he missed you. If he hadn't been called back to demon world when he was and how he was, I think he might have wanted to make peace with you."

Hiei turned back to face the human behind him.

"That means nothing coming from you," he said flatly.

Shuichi smiled gently again.

"I thought you might say that," he said. "But I wanted to tell you anyway. Maybe one day you'll appreciate it."

"Not likely," Hiei coldly replied.

Shuichi nodded.

"Do you need anything before you go?" he asked. "Food, or money?"

Hiei narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

"You're about to leave, yes?" Shuichi asked.

"There's nothing here for me," Hiei replied.

"Well it was nice to see you again," Shuichi said. "And if you ever find yourself stuck in the living world again, please feel free to visit me here, I would always be glad to see you."

Hiei resisted the urge to tell Shuichi that he considered him to be a crazy bastard, and that he intended to avoid him at all costs: because, even though he was a crazy human being kept in a hospital for crazy humans, he was still wearing the face Hiei remembered best as Kurama's, and Hiei could not bring himself to say those words to Kurama's face.

"Goodbye, Hiei," Shuichi bid him.

Hiei nodded and fled from the hospital. Outside he was a little disoriented after having taken a car to where he was, and his slight lapse in concentration was to be his downfall: within minutes of leaving the hospital grounds a blast hit his shoulder from behind and sent him tumbling over to the ground, where he was quickly commandeered by a trio of spirit world Special Defence Force soldiers.

"Fuck," Hiei muttered as they dragged him towards a portal to spirit world.

* * *

Koenma looked about as pleased to see Hiei as Hiei felt to be getting dragged into his office for the second time. That day.

"Hiei?" Koenma greeted him.

He was still in his adult form, though Hiei thought that he now understood why the prince was opting to remain in that body – presumably to allow him to pursue a relationship with Botan.

"Didn't Mukuro take you back to demon world…" he asked.

He then made an infuriatingly pointless gesture, pretending to look at a wristwatch that he was not actually wearing.

"…Oh, about two hours ago?" he finished, lifting his eyes to Hiei again.

"She made a big mistake," Hiei spat back. "Just like you."

"You think my banning you from the living world was a big mistake?" Koenma asked.

"No, you putting your fucking hands on my wife was your mistake!"

Hiei struggled against the two soldiers holding his arms behind his back, but his efforts were in vain. He could fight them off, but he did not want the hassle of having the deaths of two spirits on his conscience.

"I didn't know that you had a wife," Koenma replied, sounding and looking bored suddenly.

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Hiei yelled. "Where's Botan?"

Koenma rolled his eyes.

"Hiei, you let Botan die without even knowing her name, and now, suddenly, 10 years later, you've appeared in spirit world twice in the same day, despite that being quite impossible, insisting that she's your wife," he said tightly. "Can you understand why I'm sceptical?"

"It's just because I'm in the wrong place!" Hiei argued. "I just need to get back to that other reality!"

""Other reality"?" Koenma echoed. "You mean the one that only exists inside your head?"

"Fuck you, she chose to be my wife, and she defied you and everything in this pointless realm!"

"No Hiei, Botan has been working full-time as a ferry girl since you let her human body die. After you let her human body die, she lost the ability to take that form, so she had no other choice but to return to the life of a full-time ferry girl."

Hiei stiffened. Although he had been barely listening to Koenma he had heard the part about Botan no longer being able to take a human form, and that was not a good thing.

"You mean she can't ever be a human again?" he asked.

"She can no longer take that form at will like she once could," Koenma replied. "She may, at some point, have to take a human form for a period of time – if she were to apply to live as a spirit, for example, instead of a soul collector."

"That's when she marries me!" Hiei quickly interjected. "She becomes a human, she marries me, we have children and then she becomes a spirit."

"I don't think so, Hiei. For that to happen, Botan would have to be in love with you, and both I and my father would have to approve of her reasons for wanting to leave us."

"She doesn't care if you don't approve!"

"Hiei, just get out of my sight, and don't let me see you here or in the living world again. If I find you in the living world again – ever – I won't be as lenient as I have today."

"Fuck you, I don't care!"

Hiei tore himself free of the men holding him and walked ahead of them out of Koenma's office. They tried to grab at him again but he dodged out of their reach.

"I'm leaving!" he sneered at them. "Just open a breach for me!"

"Take a left here," one of them told him, pointing along a narrow hallway.

Hiei did as he was told, expecting to find an exit from the temple at the end of it: instead he found himself in a room with two more Special Defence Force soldiers.

"Fuck," he muttered.

They had not been ordered to attack him, but apparently they were going to delight in ganging up on him again anyway, he thought miserably.

"Ask him why he keeps asking for me," he heard a voice say.

"Hiei, Miss Botan would like to know why you keep asking for her?" one of the soldiers in the room said.

"What?" Hiei muttered, trying to peer around the two soldiers at the source of the voice behind them.

"Tell him to just answer you."

"Could you please just answer the question?" the soldier asked again.

Hiei sighed impatiently.

"Botan?" he asked, trying to see past the soldiers again.

"Ask him why he keeps calling me his wife," he heard her say.

"Miss Botan would like to know why you keep calling her your wife?" another soldier asked Hiei.

"Because she is my fucking wife!" Hiei snapped back.

"Ask him why he thinks that."

"Botan! This is stupid!"

Botan peered around the arm of a tall male soldier, eying Hiei over warily.

"I just don't understand why you've come back here after all this time," she said.

"Because you're my wife, and that idiot Koenma is trying to take you away from me!" he replied.

"Hiei, I haven't seen you in over 10 years!" she pointed out.

"So?" he asked.

"Oh, Hiei!"

She sighed, edging out slightly, taking herself fully into his line of sight but still remaining a step back from the soldiers.

"Mukuro said something about sending you to an alternate reality," she said slowly, looking down at her sleeves as she spoke.

"She sent me to a place where you are my wife and we live together in a tree-house with our son," Hiei patiently replied. "And we are both very happy. Neither of us are happy here and now because we were supposed to get married."

Botan sighed, looking anywhere but directly at Hiei, which only served to irritate him further.

"I can't imagine any reality where you and I are married," she began. "And I really can't imagine a reality where you wanted to be a father."

"I didn't want to be a father!" Hiei replied. "It was a mistake!"

"Oh, there we go," she said. "There's the Hiei that I remember…"

"Our son was a mistake, but we're proud of him!"

Botan finally met his eyes, though he could tell by the arching of her eyebrows and the straightness of her mouth that she was not happy.

"What does he look like?" she asked.

"He looks like me," Hiei replied, shrugging his shoulders.

"Of course he does."

Botan marched towards the door. Hiei reached out towards her as she neared him but his arm was smacked aside by one of the soldiers. He watched helplessly as she left again, silently wondering whether her conversation with him just then had made things between them better or worse.

"Fuck," he sighed.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Mukuro tries to impress the importance of inter-reality travel on Hiei by reminding him of his objectives and she sends him off again, though this time her attack doesn't seem to have worked… Or has it? **Chapter 8 – Tough Love**


	8. Tough Love

**A/N:** **Long chapter warning. I don't even know why…**

 **Slightly rough sexual references warning**

 **Recap:** Hiei was sent to the wrong reality (or rather not the one he wanted to be in), where he found out that he was Keiko's lover and Botan had become a zombified demon. Back in his own reality he found out that Shuichi has lived on without Kurama, but is in a mental hospital because of his recounting Kurama's life to his mother and sounding crazy. The SDF brought him back to Koenma, who was furious to see him again that day, and Botan talked to him, but it did not go well.

* * *

 **Chapter 8: Tough Love**

Mukuro was sat slouched to one side in her throne, her chin rest on one upturned palm, and she was giving Hiei a look that he considered to be her most condescending, judgemental and sarcastic ever.

"Hiei, do you remember the conversation we had about thinking about things before we talk or act?" she asked.

"Don't speak to me like I'm a child!" he snapped back.

"Don't act like one, and I won't treat you like one!" she said sternly, sitting up straight at last. "I am not messing about here, Hiei. This is not a game. I want to send you back, but I'm doing it on the understanding that it's not so that you can run around trying to make a ferry girl marry you!"

"Stop stalling and just send me back! And this time make sure you get it right! You sent me to a completely different reality this morning!"

"That's the whole point of the attack! It sends you to a completely different reality!"

"I know that! But the place you sent me to this morning wasn't the same place you sent me to before!"

"Was there a war in the place I sent you to this morning?"

"No."

"Did you find out why that was?"

"…Not exactly, no."

Mukuro proved to Hiei that the look she had been giving him when he had entered her office was not the most condescending, judgemental and sarcastic she could manage, as she promptly began glaring at him in a way that was even more condescending, judgemental and sarcastic than before. He supposed that there had not been a war in the reality she had sent him to that day because he had not killed Hitoshi in that reality – which had probably been because he not even been there to kill him, since he had been too busy dressing up like a human and playing in the living world.

But a reality where he was pretending to be human, Yusuke wanted to kill him, Botan was a mindless zombie, Kuwabara was a suited idiot with a beard and Keiko was just a nag was not worth worrying about.

Hiei briefly wondered why, in that reality, some things had not been as good as they had in the reality where he had married Botan: for example, why had Kuwabara been almost the same (except for the memory loss of course) as he was in Hiei's own reality? Kurama had been the same in both alternate realities, after all. And why had Keiko been the same in that reality as she was in his own (except for her feelings towards him)? In the good reality, she had looked completely different, as had Kuwabara.

It was hard to believe that so many lives could be so different because of one small twist in fate.

"Are you listening to me, Hiei?" Mukuro said suddenly.

"I was drifting in and out," he casually replied, ignoring the way her nostrils flared angrily at his words. "You're sending me back, and you want to know about the war, I get it. This time just make sure you send me to the right place."

"If you had been listening, you would have heard me telling you that I can't control where I send you!" she answered.

"What?" Hiei echoed.

"I can't control where you go. There are an infinite number of alternate realities, I have no way of choosing or determining which one you will end up in! It's all related to the snowball effect of each–"

"You already told me about that, and now you're just pissing me off! Send me back to the reality you sent me to the first time around!"

"I can't do that!"

"Just do it, this conversation is making me bored!"

"I'm going to do it, but you need to promise me that you won't mess up this time!"

"I won't mess up if you don't."

Mukuro sighed heavily.

"Okay Hiei," she said slowly. "Just so that we're clear: if you are in a reality where there is still a war in demon world, you are to heal yourself and come back here immediately. If you are in a reality where there is no war then you are to find out why as quickly as possible. Understand?"

"Just get on with it!"

Hiei held his arms out at his sides in anticipation of Mukuro's attack. She slid from her chair and began charging it as before, and as he watched the bluish-white glow brightening between her hands a thought occurred to Hiei about what would happen next.

"Wait," he said.

"It's too late to back out now, I've already started," she replied.

"I don't want to get thrown into that old cupboard again!" he snapped. "Let me just move…"

Hiei started to cross the room, trying to think of a good place to land after he had been sent flying into another dimension, but apparently Mukuro was not going to allow him the chance. As he passed the desk by her chair she called out his name, at which he turned to her, his eyes widening briefly before shutting tightly as he was once more blasted with her attack.

Hiei was, as he had expected he would be, thrown backwards, but this time he was not hurtled across a great distance as he had been on his previous two journeys across realities. Instead, he was thrown back a short distance before suddenly jarring to a halt as something bit painfully into his wrists. His hands went numb from the strain of his acceleration being halted so suddenly by something that was holding him only by the wrists, but he overlooked the discomfort as it was preferable to the humiliation of being sent crashing through a wall or skidding along a stone floor.

Hiei opened his eyes. He was still in Mukuro's office – again proving that inter-reality travel did not send him through physical space any – and it looked about the same as it always had. Mukuro was not there, which was the first sign that he had travelled to another reality. And, as he tried to lower his arms, Hiei saw the second sign that he was somewhere different: his fall had been halted because his wrists were tied up in bonds that had been secured over a roof beam above his head. He stared up at the ties curiously, so surprised to find himself in such a position that it took him several seconds to start actually realising how embarrassing and ridiculous it was that he was tied up in Mukuro's office.

He began to attempt to wrestle himself free, trying to slip his hands through the ties and trying to pull the roof beam down. He watched his hands as he struggled, and again wanted to kick himself as it took his mind far longer than it ought to have to realise that his arms looked different somehow. He stopped moving, slowly inspecting the length of each arm and his hands. He was not wearing his wedding ring, which obviously meant that he was in the wrong reality again – he wondered if Mukuro was deliberately trying to infuriate him – and, strangest of all, his right arm was bare, which meant that, in this reality, he either did not care for correctly containing the Dragon of the Darkness Flame or he had just used it and had not had the chance to replace the bandages to his arm yet.

Also his skin was shiny and smelled like food.

Hiei slowly lowered his head. The first thing he saw was confusing but slightly hopeful: he only had one hiruiseki around his neck, but it was not his own stone, rather it was his sister's. The second thing he saw made him realise he was not leaving this reality any time soon: the wound in his abdomen was at least as deep as it had been the last time around. The third thing Hiei saw made him sweat in blind panic: he was tied up in Mukuro's office, completely naked and drenched in something oily that smelled worryingly like a cooking substance.

Hiei renewed his efforts to get free. Apparently he had been sent to a reality where Mukuro was a demon-eating demon, and she was about to cook him alive. Either that or she intended to sacrifice him in the name of something unholy. Neither option was appealing and there was a chance that she would return and carry out whatever twisted plan she had for him before he managed to heal himself and get back to his own reality, so escape was his best option. However, despite his attempts now being quite desperate, he could not free himself. Whatever his bonds were made of or enforced with, they were unbreakable. The roof beam above him however was starting to gradually break apart.

Hiei powered up and pulled down with all his strength, the beam finally breaking above him. He quickly leapt away from the spot he had been confined to, watching as a piece of the beam fell to the floor, his bonds still attached to it. He was not free, but at least he was no longer restricted to the one place. He began looking about the office for his clothes, expecting to find them torn from the inevitable struggle he must have put up before being restrained in such a humiliating fashion. He thought that, if he found his clothes in tact and in one pile, he would feel worried about his situation: but he felt far more worried when, after extensive searching, he did not find his clothes at all.

Had he been brought into Mukuro's office naked? What sort of disturbed reality was this?

Hiei did not intend to wait around long enough to learn the answer to either of his questions. Instead he grabbed up a towel and, after much struggling with his hands tied to a lump of wood, he wrapped the towel around his waist. He gathered up the piece of roof beam he was still attached to and hurried out of the office, carrying it in his arms.

Using his extensive knowledge of the interior of the fortress, Hiei crept around until he eventually recovered his own clothes, dressing the lower half of his body and carrying his coat with him as his arms were still caught up in his bonds and he could not put them through sleeves. He had a plan about taking himself out to one of the more remote parts of Mukuro's territory and healing himself as best he could before sleeping off the remainder of the damage so that he could leave this twisted reality, but it would not be easy to carry off with his hands restricted so.

Hiei briefly wondered what had become of Botan in this reality. Had he turned his back on her and let the rock monster take her life here too? Had there even been a rock monster?

When he eventually made it outside, Hiei could immediately see that this was a reality where there was no war, as a border patrol vehicle was returning and another was being deployed, and the sheer number of demons milling about outside was contradictory to his own reality, where most of the men and women had left the fortress to fight in the war long ago. Hiei quickly and quietly made his way out of the fortress grounds and out into the land beyond, but unfortunately he was then spotted by the departing border patrol guards, who seemed quite alarmed to see him walking about freely amongst them. When they started chasing him, Hiei did not bother standing to fight. He was unarmed and his hands were tied, so he would not be able to fend off so many at once. Instead he ran to the border patrol road and followed it to the nearest portal to the living world: if there was no war, there ought not to be a Kakai Barrier, he decided.

And luckily his assumptions were correct, as he shortly found himself running through the streets of a city in the living world. Of course, it was not just any city in the living world, it was clearly the same city Yusuke, Kurama and Kuwabara lived in. Hiei contemplated seeking them out to find out what had become of them in this reality and why it had come about, but he had a mild fear that they too might try to eat or ritually sacrifice him, so he ran on.

Perhaps on instinct, Hiei took himself to the old lady's temple. It was unharmed in this reality, but there was no clearing and no tree-house in the forest, so this was definitely not the reality he had been expecting to travel to. The temple was empty but again it did look lived in. Once Hiei was absolutely sure that he was alone there he went back outside and dunked himself into a pond in the gardens. He did not bother undressing before doing so, as he was mainly trying to clean his wound and get the oily grease off of his skin, and since it had soaked into his clothes too, he saw no point in not washing them too.

The water around him turned pinkish-red and small globules of grease formed along the surface, making for a quite unattractive sight. He was glad that Yukina was not there to see it, though he was also slightly disappointed that she was not there to heal his wound and speed his return to his own reality. He did not even have the advantage of any demon plants or herbs to make up a basic healing balm. He might be stuck there for a few days, he thought miserably.

"Bingo! I knew it was you, Hiei!"

Hiei froze, wondering if he had gone mad. He was sure that he had just heard Botan's voice, though that made no sense.

"It's vey odd to see you here though. There's nobody else here, I'm afraid."

Hiei slowly turned his head to look back over one shoulder and his eyes soon located a familiar blue-haired woman in a pink kimono balanced on an oar that was hovering a few feet above the ground.

"Oh dear!" she said, leaning to one side slightly. "Are you hurt?"

She swooped closer to him and slid from her oar, kneeling down at the edge of the pond, her pink eyes almost popping out of her head as she caught sight of the discoloured water around him.

"Hiei!" she gasped. "Oh gracious, what happened to you?"

She met his eyes expectantly, but Hiei could not form words to answer her.

"Let me help you," she offered.

"Why would you want to do that?" he asked her.

He had to ask that because he had no idea what sort of relationship they shared in this reality: she at least knew his name and seemed concerned about his welfare, which was a good start, but she was also still a full ferry girl, so this was not a reality where she was living in a human body as anybody's wife – which was good as it meant that she was not married to anyone else, but it was also bad because it meant that she was not married to him.

"Because we're friends?" she asked.

"Are we?" he pressed.

Her face changed slightly as disappointment and mild concern began playing on her features.

"We used to be," she said quietly. "Or at least, I always thought that we were. You threatened to kill me quite a few times and you only spoke to me when you were insulting me, correcting me or threatening me, but I always thought of you as a friend, Hiei."

Hiei slowly dragged himself out of the pond, sitting onto the stone slabs that lined the edge of the water.

"How silly of me," Botan said, lowering her eyes to the ground. "Of course you don't remember me. I haven't seen you in so many years, and you never even knew my name when we did work together, so why would you remember it now?"

"Your name's Botan," Hiei replied before he could stop himself,

He had not meant to respond to her at all, but when she looked up at him again and started to smile, an optimistically cheerful gleam sparkling across her eyes, he felt a little better about his mistake.

"Oh Hiei, you do remember me!" she gushed.

"Hn, how could I forget," he said, rolling his eyes.

"But what are you doing here in the living world?" she asked. "You said that you would never come back here."

Hiei did not answer her. He could not think of a suitable lie. He was not the Hiei she knew, and so he could even begin to think up a response that she might actually believe.

"Oh no…" she said when he did not reply. "Did Mukuro dump you?"

"What?"

Hiei barked out his response more forcefully than he had meant to and Botan jerked back from him slightly in surprise.

"I'm sorry!" she quickly apologised. "I didn't mean to pry!"

Hiei frowned at her, wondering what she was talking about. As he glared at her he saw Botan's eyes slowly wander from his.

"…Well, that's maybe not entirely true…" she said awkwardly. "I maybe did want to know more…"

She grinned and then began pulling a cat face at him.

"Can you forgive a nosy little kitten for being too curious?" she asked sweetly.

"Stop pulling that face and I'll think about it," he sternly replied.

She immediately stopped, which was a relief, as it had been becoming quite annoying quite quickly.

"Would you like me to heal your wound for you?" she offered.

"…Not yet, no…" he replied. "Tell me something first: when did you last see me?"

"You don't remember?" she asked.

"No," he replied. "Remind me."

"Well now, let's see…"

She touched one finger to her chin and rolled her eyes up towards the sky in thought. It was quite an innocent gesture, but the slight upwards tilt of her head was exposing her throat to the light and Hiei found his eyes wandering to it, and he had to fight the urge to lunge at her and bite her. The thought made him wonder when he had begun finding Botan attractive: had he perhaps always thought of her as attractive but never seriously considered her before because she was a ferry girl, or was it just that she had done some quite erotic things to him recently and made him hunger for more?

"Demon world tournament," she eventually said, lowering her head again and snapping Hiei out of his reverie. "I saw you at the demon world tournament. I don't know that you saw me there, but I definitely saw you there. Before that… The day you left to go to demon world to train with Mukuro."

Hiei nodded slowly.

"That was a long time ago," he pointed out.

"Yes, I suppose that it was, really," she agreed.

"Why haven't I seen you since then?" he asked.

"…Because I'm a ferry girl who lives in spirit world and works in the living world, and you're a demon who lives and works in demon world?" she offered.

"What about that mission we all went on together?"

"Mission? You mean when Sensui opened the tunnel from the living world to demon world?"

"No, after that."

"…There was no mission after that."

"What about the mission in demon world, after Enki died and ownership of demon world was divided up again?"

"Oh, you mean the mission to stop that one demon who rebelled against the decision to divide control of demon world?"

"Yes."

"Yes, I remember that. And I remember that you weren't a part of that mission."

"…Why not?"

"You haven't spoken to any of us – not even Yukina – since the demon world tournament, when you decided to become Mukuro's lover."

At first Hiei thought that Botan had accidentally used the wrong word, since he had decided to become Mukuro's partner around the time of the demon world tournament, and perhaps she had misunderstood the nature of their partnership.

"I think it's lovely," she added. "I thought it was so gallant of you to forfeit your match against her in the demon world tournament."

"What?" Hiei echoed.

"I didn't understand why you did it at the time," Botan continued, oblivious to his mounting horror. "I said to Lord Koenma: "I've never known Hiei turn down a challenge". I just couldn't understand it! But then I asked Kurama, and he explained everything."

"Hn, Kurama…"

"I think it's wonderful that you found a lover you have so much in common with. I didn't think you were the romantic sort, Hiei, but when I heard about how you forfeited that match because you were so in love with Mukuro that you just couldn't bring yourself to fight her, I realised how wrong I was!"

"I'm not in love with Mukuro."

"But Kurama told me that the two of you were lovers!"

"Well even Kurama can be wrong!"

"But Yusuke told me that you submitted yourself to her completely!"

"Well obviously Yusuke was mocking you!"

"But you're wearing handcuffs and a dog collar, Hiei."

Hiei grabbed his hands at his neck, stiffening as he felt a leather collar around his neck that he had not been aware of before then.

"I suppose the reason you'd never had a girlfriend before was because you were looking for a woman who was stronger than you, a woman who could dominate you," Botan continued. "And the only woman who is stronger than you is Mukuro, so it should have been obvious that the two of you would become lovers."

"We're not lovers!" Hiei quickly corrected her.

"But Kurama told me that you gave her your hirui stone as a sign of your affection for her," she replied.

"Kurama's wrong!" he snapped.

"But Yusuke told me that you never leave Mukuro's home, because when you're not training with her soldiers, you're making love to her."

Hiei's lips peeled back from his teeth and he grabbed a hand around the collar he was wearing – which was so tight he thought himself quite stupid for not having noticed it before.

"And how would Yusuke know that?" he asked, tearing the collar from his throat and flinging it into the pond.

"I don't know," Botan replied with a shrug.

She watched the collar sink to the bottom of the pond, disappearing in the murky water, before turning back to Hiei, looking slightly concerned.

"Are you sure you should have done that, Hiei?" she asked him. "Mukuro put that collar on you for a good reason. That was very naughty of you to take it off. She'll probably give you a spanking for that."

Hiei paled in shock at hearing a ferry girl speaking so explicitly: but then he remembered that this particular ferry girl was Botan, the same ferry girl who, in another dimension, took delight in tying him up to her bed and taking advantage of him, and his shock gave way to ire.

"If you don't shut up, I'll give you a spanking!" he snapped.

He had spoken without really thinking about what he was actually saying – which was how he always spoke – but when she scrambled back from him and her face turned red the implications of his words sank in and he began to grin. In one smooth motion he was on his feet and stalking towards her as she continued to try to shuffle back from him, still sat on the ground. He deliberately moved slowly, prolonging the moment and letting her think that she might actually manage to evade him, savouring the look on her face as she stared up at him: it was mostly a fearful look but there was the mildest hint of curiosity and something indefinable.

Apparently, even in a reality where they had never been caught in that cave together and then gotten married, Botan was still attracted to Hiei.

He growled and pounced at her and she squealed and rolled out of the way. Ordinarily he would still have managed to catch her, but his legs got tangled in the bonds from his wrists to the roof beam and he fell ungracefully hard to the ground, landing in a crumpled, pitiful heap.

"A-are you alright, Hiei?" Botan asked him. "Oh, please let me heal that wound for you now!"

"…No…" he muttered into his own armpit. "I'm not ready to go back yet."

"You don't have to go back to demon world," she replied, understandably misinterpreting his words. "I was supposed to go back to spirit world over an hour ago, but sometimes I like to just relax here for a little while. It's so peaceful here, I love this temple and the grounds around it."

Hiei slowly sat back onto his heels.

"Have you always liked this place that much?" he asked her.

"Absolutely," she replied with a small nod. "If I was a human, I would live here all the time. It would be like a little piece of paradise living here."

Hiei finally understood why he lived in that tree-house in the other reality. The faraway and loving look on Botan's face as she surveyed their surroundings gave him a small sense of déjà vu, one that was only furthered by what she said next.

"Why don't you stay here with me?" she offered. "For a just a little while. You never know Hiei, you might like it."

It was odd, because Botan had never said those words to Hiei in his own reality, but somehow they sounded familiar. The sense of déjà vu he now felt was as strong as it had been when she had said things in the ideal reality that he could remember her saying in his own reality: so did that then mean that what she had just said to him now, in this other reality, she had also said to him in another reality before? Was it possible that every strange feeling of déjà vu he had ever felt was because he was experiencing something that he had already lived through in another reality somewhere?

"I want to stay here," he said.

She smiled at his response, but again her eyes lowered to his mid-section.

"And you'll let me heal that?" she asked.

"I can heal it myself," he lied, covering the bloody mark with his hands. "Forget about it."

"You haven't changed one bit, Hiei!" she said. "You're still stubborn. You never wanted help or asked for help, even when it was obvious that you needed it. And you never let me heal you."

"It doesn't matter, forget about it."

"It matters to me. I couldn't help the team by fighting because I don't have the strength or skill to fight, and my healing abilities were the only useful thing I could do apart from relaying messages between Yusuke and Lord Koenma. Every time you refuse my help, you make me feel useless."

Hiei could not really remember refusing Botan's help to heal his injuries in the past, but he supposed that was probably because he could barely remember her and he had likely dismissed her with just two, very unpleasant, words, so there was not really much to remember. He had never thought that any refusals he may have made would have bothered her so much.

"You don't even remember, do you?" she asked. "I'm surprised that you remember me at all. I remember everything about you. I even remember that you're the missing brother Yukina is looking for!"

Hiei turned sharply to glare at her and Botan started to sweat, grinning at him nervously.

"I haven't told her!" she quickly added. "I've kept the secret!"

"Good, that's the way it should be," he said.

"…Even though it's been really hard and I've come so close to telling her so many times…" she muttered.

Hiei glared at her again and again Botan just grinned in response.

"Where is Yukina?" Hiei asked her.

"She lives here in the temple mostly," Botan replied. "But at this time of day she's probably in the city having lunch with Kuwabara – oopsie!"

Botan clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes growing large as though she had said something she ought not to have and was now filled with guilt and regret.

"I already know that Kuwabara can't stay away from her," Hiei assured her.

"Kuwabara is very kind to Yukina," she said as her hands slid from her mouth. "And he's changed a lot since you last saw him."

"Just so long as he doesn't have that stupid little beard," Hiei muttered, mostly to himself.

"Oh, you've been watching with your jagan eye?" Botan said. "You've seen how Kuwabara is now!"

Hiei contained a sarcastic remark about how he saw Kuwabara now. It was odd that Kuwabara was unchanged across all realities except the ideal one Hiei was trying to get back to. Everyone else had been different in at least one of the alternate realities except for Kuwabara, who was always a bearded fool in a bad suit except for in the perfect reality where he had been almost exactly like Hiei remembered him from their days working for spirit world together.

"Why is he like that?" Hiei asked.

He wanted to commit seppuku for even thinking to ask such a ridiculously shameful question, but he had to know. He was hoping the answer might provide a clue as to how to get back to the reality he wanted to be in.

"What do you mean?" Botan asked.

"Why did Kuwabara change?" he asked.

"Well, he just grew up, I suppose," Botan replied, shrugging her shoulders. "Everyone did. He had to get a regular job like a regular human. He works long hours, I rarely see him during the day unless I join him and Yukina at lunchtime."

That also contradicted the Kuwabara of the ideal reality, Hiei thought, who had been around most of the day and only ever seemed to spend his time taking Monzan to kindergarten and singing karaoke with Yukina.

"What about the others? Where are they?" he asked.

"Yusuke works at Yukimura Restaurant, with Keiko's parents," Botan replied. "And Keiko is a teacher. Kurama owns a plant shop on the street his mother lives on – but maybe you already knew that?"

"…And what about you?"

"Me? I'm a ferry girl, silly! I just collect souls and sometimes come here for some fun."

"…You just collect souls?"

"Yes."

"You're not… You know… Marrying anyone?"

"Marrying? Me? Oh goodness, no!"

Botan laughed as though she thought that Hiei had been joking: but he noticed that her laughter was slightly forced.

"Oh dear no," she said. "I can't get married, I'm a ferry girl."

"That doesn't mean you can't get married," Hiei muttered.

"I don't have a permanent physical presence," she replied. "And besides, I wouldn't marry anyone anyway."

"Yes you would."

"No I wouldn't."

"Yes you would."

"No I wouldn't."

"Yes you would!"

"No, I – Hiei are you alright?"

"No, I'm not alright! I'm stuck in these fucking handcuffs like a slave!"

"…But you like that…"

"I don't like it!"

"Oh dear!"

Botan covered her mouth with her hands again and, to Hiei's horror, her eyes began watering as though she was about to start crying.

"Mukuro didn't dump you," she said into her hands. "You dumped Mukuro!"

Hiei groaned in frustration.

"Mukuro and I are not lovers!" he shouted.

"So it's true? The relationship is over?"

"We never were lovers!"

"But Kurama told me–"

"He was wrong!"

Botan's hands dropped into her lap and she nodded, though a single tear did escape the corner of one of her fuchsia eyes.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you," she said. "It's so nice to see you again, and I'm so pleased that you can remember me."

"How could I forget you?" Hiei grumbled, turning his head from her.

"I'm so happy to see you that I want to hug you."

Hiei's head snapped back around and his eyes instantly found Botan's. She faltered slightly under his glare, and attempted a shaky smile.

"But I won't, of course," she added. "I remember that you don't like people touching you."

"Hn, I don't remember anyone from spirit world ever not doing something because they knew it would piss me off," Hiei said sarcastically.

"Oh, alright then!" Botan said.

He had expected her to defend spirit world and her beloved Lord Koenma, but instead she threw her arms around his shoulders and pulled him against her chest. With his arms still restrained he could not return her gesture, which was more than a little frustrating, as the kimono she wore was delightfully thin and he could feel every detail of her body through it against his own body and he wanted to get his hands on her. However, having Botan hug him was infinitely preferable to having Botan lecture him on the wonders of spirit world and its residents, so he settled for just leaning into her and enjoying not being in a reality where she would only approach him if there was a wall of Special Defence Force soldiers between them both.

"Aren't you going to tell me that you want to break my arms off?" she asked him. "Usually you threaten to maim or kill me if I try to touch you."

"Do you want me to threaten you?" he asked her.

"No," she replied. "I'd like it if we could just have a nice friendly hug. And we did, I'll let you go now."

She leaned back from him and slid her arms from around him, and with a great effort he pulled himself back out of her embrace. Their eyes met and she smiled sweetly again and Hiei felt logic abandon him.

"What about a nice friendly kiss?" he asked.

Her smile thinned slightly.

"A-a kiss?" she echoed. "You want me to k-kiss you?"

"You said we were friends," he replied. "You gave me a friendly hug, so now you can give me a friendly kiss!"

"Um, well, the way you just said that was a little bit demanding and creepy–"

"Just shut-up and kiss me!"

Hiei was getting sick of travelling across realities where Botan would not even come near him, if he was to be stuck in this strange one where he was apparently Mukuro's lover, the least Botan could do was kiss him for his efforts.

"O-okay…" she said.

She moved forwards slowly and her lips briefly touched his cheek before she whipped her head back again.

"…What the hell was that?" he asked her in a low voice.

He was seriously not impressed.

"A friendly kiss?" she tried.

"That was a friendly kiss?" he echoed. "That? Clearly we're not very good friends if that's all you think of me!"

"I haven't seen you in so long and you're so strong and scary and I never know if you really mean it or if you're just joking when you say you want to kill me!"

"Kiss me properly and I won't need to kill you!"

"That's not a very nice way to ask a girl to kiss you, Hiei!"

Hiei growled in frustration, turning his head from her again. Was she this infuriating in every other reality too? And if so, how had she ever turned into the version of herself that he had met in the first, perfect, alternate reality? He could not honestly imagine himself wanting to go through the rigmarole of a human wedding for someone that irritating – maybe she had just confused him with sex, he decided, and then once she had given birth to his son he had been obliged to honour the terms of their marriage.

"I-I'm sorry Hiei," she said quietly. "You're just a little bit scary sometimes. And volatile. But I know you would never really hurt me. You say things like "I'll rather enjoy torturing you to death" and "I will kill you", but I know you would never really do those things. If you did really mean it when you said those things, Kuwabara would have died at your hands a long, long time ago."

Hiei did not especially like being told that his threats were not taken seriously, least of all by a ferry girl who had quoted him in a pitiful attempt at his own voice: after all, he really did want to kill Kuwabara, and the real reason he restrained himself had nothing to do with shallow threats, but rather came down to the fact that the human was sometimes useful in a battle and that Yukina would probably be really upset if he died.

"Come here."

Botan slid her hands up either side of his face and turned his head around towards her. He was still feeling cheated and belittled, but as his eyes met hers he soon forgot why he had doubted her. She moved forwards and placed a kiss on his lips that was ridiculously light and gentle. Without the full use of his hands to hold her still Hiei simply leaned into her and tried to prolong the contact, and, to his surprise, she did not break away from him. Taking advantage of her lack of resistance, Hiei sucked at her lower lip, at which she almost immediately parted her lips and allowed him deeper access into the sweet, welcoming warmth of her mouth. He made a small, involuntary moan and inexplicably the sound made her lean closer to him. After what Hiei thought was possibly the longest kiss in any of the three worlds, they both leaned back from each other simultaneously. She looked slightly flustered and a little bit confused, but the look made her somehow more attractive to him. Hiei thought that he might be able to move in for a second kiss, but then Botan said something that shattered the moment.

"That was a very friendly kiss, Hiei."

His hope, and certain other aspects of his being, deflated.

"Do you kiss all your friends like that?" she asked, tilting her head slightly. "I know you don't have many friends, but you do seem to be very close with and very loyal to the friends that you do have… Would you kiss Yusuke like that?"

Hiei groaned and let himself fall back to lie on the ground.

"That really is a terrible wound," Botan added. "I'm sure Mukuro would be very worried if she knew that you were hurt so badly. Unless she inflicted that wound on you. In which case, she's probably very aroused or very frustrated, depending on whether you stayed around long enough to pleasure her afterwards."

Hiei growled, balling his hands into fists and pushing them against his eyes. He held his position until his anger had subsided enough that he trusted himself to look at Botan again, but when he moved his hands and opened his eyes to look for her, she was gone. He slowly sat up, tensing slightly as the tautening of his stomach muscles made the edges of his wound sting painfully. He looked around, but Botan was nowhere to be seen. Since she had gone, there was no point in him remaining where he was, he thought. He understood all that he needed to anyway: this reality had come about because, for some unknown reason, he had decided to become Mukuro's lover, and in this reality Botan was still not his wife and Monzan did not exist.

He dragged himself to his feet and started to walk across the gardens but stopped again as he spotted Botan exiting the temple.

"If you won't let me heal you, will you at least let me dress the wound?" she called over to him. "Also, I brought you clean clothes."

Hiei was unsure what to do or say, but as Botan moved towards him and smiled at him he found himself sitting down on the ground. She knelt down in front of him and placed down the bundle of clothes and bandages she had taken out.

"I didn't have much choice when I was picking out clothes for you," she said as she began gently wiping at the edges of his wound.

Her actions were both painful and pleasurable, and it was difficult for Hiei to concentrate on what she was saying: though he suspected that she was just talking nonsense again anyway.

"I couldn't find a black shirt, and I know you like black so much," she continued. "So I had to settle for red. You probably don't like wearing red. I've only ever seen you wearing red once before, during the dark tournament, you had a red shirt on one morning, and you looked really sexy in it."

Botan and Hiei both froze and it was debatable which of them looked more surprised.

"Um…" Botan began. "N-not that I noticed… Not that I was thinking or looking at you in that way, it was just that it was really…"

She lowered her head and continued cleaning his wound, but Hiei was not about to let her little confession pass without comment: this reality was, after all, apparently identical to his own up the point of the demon world tournament where he had forfeited his fight against Mukuro instead of fighting her like he had in his own reality, so anything that had happened as far back as the dark tournament had to be the same. If she had found him attractive in the dark tournament in this reality, she must have also done so in his own reality.

"There we are," she said as she finished cleaning his wound. "Now I'm going to start applying a dressing, and I will need to put it on quite tightly to help keep the wound dry and to encourage it to close, so this next part might hurt. I'm sorry, but if you won't let me heal it, this is the only way."

"Hn, do you think something so minute would really cause me pain?" Hiei confidently replied.

"No, probably not, but I don't want to hurt you, I just want to help you."

Hiei momentarily forgot about Botan's earlier misspoken words as her last statement lingered in his mind.

"And I know that you don't need my help," she added. "But sometimes it's right to show some…"

Hiei lowered his head expectantly, but Botan kept her head down as she worked and she said no more.

"What?" he asked.

"You need to try to keep this dry," she said, keeping her head down. "It will heal faster that way – although with your healing abilities, you'll probably be healed by tomorrow morning, so I'm probably just wasting my time telling you that."

"What?" Hiei pressed.

"I-I was just suggesting that you keep the wound dry," Botan replied.

She finished taping a square of gauze over the cross-mark on his abdomen and then began winding a bandage around his body, which mostly involved her having her arms around him, which was slightly distracting.

"No…" he muttered. "What did you say after that? You said something about showing something."

Botan's movements stiffened slightly and Hiei heard her make a very small noise of awkwardness, but she quickly recovered her mistake and continued her actions.

"Botan?" he pressed.

"I should probably get back to spirit world," she said, her voice suddenly changed. "Lord Koenma will be most angry if I stay here much longer."

She began tucking the end of the bandage in on itself and again the feeling of her fingers against his skin momentarily distracted Hiei – he had never felt such a strong response to such a slight touch, but again he blamed that on what she had done to him in that ideal reality.

"I hope everything works out between you and Mukuro," she said, rising to her feet and avoiding looking directly at him. "I always thought that the two of you made such a lovely couple."

Her oar materialised into one hand and Hiei was on his feet before she could use it.

"Wait!" he shouted.

She winced at the suddenness and volume of his voice, but still did not look directly at him.

"Finish what you were saying before!" he demanded.

"It's not important, Hiei," she said, clearing lying as her eyes darted about as she spoke. "It was so nice to see you again. I've left those clothes for you. I hope I'll see you again some time."

"Don't go."

Botan finally met his eyes, clearly looking so shocked by his words that she had forgotten about her earlier concerns.

"Not until you've answered me," he added.

"I can't," she said quietly.

"Why not?" he snapped irritably.

"Because I'm too scared. You really will kill me if I tell you what I was about to say. It's the sort of thing I should only think inside my head and never actually say out loud. I just… It was just that you don't often show moments of weakness, and I suppose I thought that I had a chance to say it, but I have no right to–"

"Just say it, woman!"

"I know you don't need anyone's help with anything, ever, but sometimes it's right to show some humility! Sometimes it takes more strength to ask for help, or to just accept it, than to stubbornly sit there and pretend that you're invincible all the time!"

Botan turned her head from him and Hiei saw her knuckles whiten as she tightened her grip on her oar.

"It sometimes seems like, even if you were mortally wounded, you would rather die, slowly and painfully, than let a pathetic ferry girl like me help you," she added quietly. "If I ever found you like that, I would help you because I care, but you would probably be ungrateful and hate me even more for it."

"This must have happened in the cave…" Hiei muttered under his breath.

"What?" Botan echoed, turning to him again.

He did not answer her, mostly because he did not want to explain that he was only visiting her from another reality. But her words had been more helpful to him than she would ever know. In the ideal reality, she had mentioned being stuck in the cave with him after he had saved her from the rock monster, during which time he was apparently mortally wounded, but she had nursed him back to life. If her last statement was anything to go by, apparently the weakness he had shown in the cave, the reliance on her help he had demonstrated, had been what had changed the nature of their relationship. The idea of being so helpless and reduced to relying solely on a ferry girl in a human body in order to survive was pathetic at best, but as Hiei thought more about it, he realised that the time they had spent in the cave in that other reality had probably been the only circumstances under which either of them would ever have warmed to the other: his weakness and acceptance of her help had made her feel wanted and liked by him and her gentle touches and genuine kindness had shown him that there was a place in his life for love.

"Can I ask you a question before you leave?" he asked her slowly. "It's a… Philosophical question."

"Okay," she agreed.

"If you managed to visit paradise, but you left it and lost your way back, what would you do?"

Botan gave him a strange look, but Hiei did not really care what she thought of him: he was never going to see the Botan of this reality again anyway, so he had nothing to lose by behaving strangely in front of her.

"I think that I would try to find my way back there," she eventually replied. "No matter what. If it really was paradise, I think it would be worth fighting for. Even if it took the rest of my life to figure out how to get back there, I would do it."

Hiei nodded.

"I thought you might say that," he said quietly.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei gets a few more answers about the reality he is in before returning to his own reality, where he learns a little more about the Kuwabara and Keiko of his own reality before the SDF once more catch up to him and bring him in front of Koenma – for the third time that day – and he finds another reason to hate his own reality. **Chapter 9 – Seeing Red**


	9. Seeing Red

**Recap:** Hiei went to a reality where he was – basically – Mukuro's sex slave; but, bonus! Botan was her usual, ferry girl, all-loving self, and he was able to talk to her about a few things.

* * *

 **Chapter 9: Seeing Red**

Botan looked down at her oar, a frown playing on her brow as though she was conflicted about something.

"C-can I ask you a question now?" she asked, keeping her eyes on her oar.

"Okay," Hiei agreed.

"Why did you just ask me about paradise?" she asked, her eyes still looking down. "I didn't think someone like you even thought about such things."

Hiei wondered about the merits of telling this Botan about what he had seen in the paradise reality. Would she reveal anything of value about how they had come to be married if he told her that, in another reality, it had actually happened?

"You're like an onion, Hiei," she said, laughing slightly. "You have many layers, but whenever I try to peel them I end up in tears!"

She giggled into one sleeve, but Hiei failed to see the humour in her analogy – after all, she was basically telling him that she thought he was a pungent root vegetable.

"If you don't want to answer me, that's fine," she said, turning her head from him.

"I was just curious," he said.

"It was just so unlike you to ask such a thing… Do you know Hiei, you've said more words to me today than you ever have before in the entire time I knew you. I think you must have bashed your head against the headboard when you were making love to–"

"Stop it!"

"Oopsie!"

Botan covered her mouth with her hands but Hiei could tell by the shape and shimmer of her eyes that she was still grinning at him.

"I'm not Mukuro's lover," he insisted. "I'm actually–"

Hiei was cut off by the sound of voices yelling out to him from the temple steps. He turned to see a group of Mukuro's soldiers running through the gate, apparently after him. He turned back to tell Botan to flee but she was already high in the sky. He momentarily wished that he was on her oar with her, but knew that he was too late to catch her, and his priority had to be to escape capture himself: the last thing he wanted was to be dragged back to Mukuro and made to have sex with her. Even if it was an alternate reality, he knew that he would never be able to face his boss again if he had to experience that, and so he grabbed up the roof beam he was still tied to and fled.

* * *

Hiei was starting to find his earlier conversation with Botan quite ironic: she had accused him of not showing any humility, and now, less than an hour later, he was handcuffed to a piece of wood, half naked, cowering inside a giant trash receptacle, suppressing his energy and trying to keep himself hidden from a collection of Mukuro soldiers who, in his own reality, feared him, but in this reality, intended to take him back to Mukuro, who would probably want to tie him up again and finish whatever she had been trying to do with him when he had arrived in that reality. Which was, quite frankly, the most vivid example of humility he could think of.

He had made it into the city, though not very far in, before being forced to hide. Botan had long gone, and his pursuers were gradually moving away from his location, but he did not want to attempt moving or healing himself until he was sure that he would not be caught. He had toyed with the idea of tracking down Botan or Kurama and finding out a little more about exactly how this reality had come about and just how different it was from his own as a result, but he had given up on that idea as time passed and his already limited patience wore thin.

Hiei only had one objective: to get back to the paradise reality and stay there.

With that thought in mind, Hiei pushed the lid of the giant trash can open slightly and peered out. He was at the side of a high building in what seemed to be a centre of commercial buildings. The place seemed vaguely familiar, and Hiei started to realise why as he saw two figures walking towards the building he was hiding next to: it was the same building he had found Yukina outside of in the second reality he had visited, where she had claimed to be waiting for Kuwabara, and in this reality, she was returning to the building with Kuwabara, who looked the same as he had across all the other realities, again proving that only the ideal reality had really had any impact on Kuwabara's life.

Hiei wondered why that was.

"Maybe I'll see you tonight?" he heard Yukina say.

"I dunno, I gotta work late tonight, Yukina," Kuwabara replied.

His speech was slurred and he sounded as though he had just woken up.

"Oh that's too bad," Yukina said, sounding disappointed. "I'll see you for lunch tomorrow though, right?"

"Yeah, sure," he replied. "I just have to get this project finished. My boss said if I get this done by the end of the week, he'll consider me for a promotion."

"That's wonderful, Kazuma!" she replied.

"Yeah, but he said I'd get promoted after that last job I did… And the one before that… And the one before that… Well, anyway, it was great seeing you, Yukina."

"I wish we could spend more time together."

"…Yeah, me too."

Yukina gently pulled Kuwabara's tie and stretched up onto her tip-toes, pulling his face down to a level where she could reach him to kiss him on the cheek. To Hiei's surprise, Kuwabara barely smiled in response: which was contradictory to the way he had always dribbled pitifully over her in the past and still did in the perfect reality.

"Good luck, Kazuma!" Yukina called after him as he started to leave her.

He walked on without turning around, but did raise a hand to acknowledge her words. Kuwabara moved out of Hiei's line of sight, but Yukina remained where she was for a long time afterwards, watching the point he had disappeared at, looking slightly saddened and disappointed. She still looked much happier than she did in Hiei's own reality, but she was not nearly as cheerful, relaxed and generally contented as she was in the paradise reality.

Hiei slid out of the trash can, picking a banana peel out of his hair and kicking one foot free of the paper shreddings that had become entangled around it. He then walked briskly towards his sister, who, in her distracted state staring at the point she had last seen Kuwabara, did not notice him until he was upon her.

"Oh, Mister Hiei!" she said, turning to him.

Her expression was completely unchanged, and even her tone had sounded forced.

"What a surprise to see you here," she said, sounding anything but surprised. "I didn't think I would ever see you again, least of all in this realm."

"Why not?" Hiei asked her, deciding to try to pry for some information about this reality.

"Well, you became Lady Mukuro's lover and decided to stay with her, didn't you?" she replied. "But why do you have wood?"

"What?!"

Hiei looked down at himself in alarm, seeing only the chunk of roof beam he was still forced to carry with him. He slowly looked up at his innocent sister again and saw that she had meant her words quite literally, and he then felt a little guilty for thinking otherwise.

"Never mind about that," he said dismissively. "What made you think I was Mukuro's lover?"

"Well, Mister Kurama told me that you became her lover after she nursed you back to life," Yukina replued. "He said you fought Lady Mukuro's associate to replace him at her side, and you almost died, but Lady Mukuro saved your life and you fell in love with her."

Hiei twitched. He distinctly remembered fighting Shigure in his own reality to become Mukuro's right-hand man, so to speak, and he had almost died. She had saved his life and she had read his mind to learn all the secrets about his past before then showing him the details of her own past. After he had recovered, they had, one night, shared a very odd conversation where she had, very ambiguously, suggested that she would take him as a lover if he was interested, which he had, as diplomatically as he knew how to, turned down.

Hiei twitched again. Diplomacy really was a weakness for him, he thought, and he had never really cared or noticed it before, but it seemed to be surfacing a lot since Mukuro had first sent him into another reality. Thinking more about that day when Mukuro had subtly suggested that they should become lovers, he was surprised that she had not done more than just throw him against a wall: he was surprised that she had not left him as a mere stain on the wall. He could still remember that night in sickening detail.

"I'm very impressed with you, Hiei," she had said. "The way you fought against Shigure and the speed of your recovery. And, as I think I already told you, your soul and your life story fascinate me. When I saw who you really were, for the first time ever, I felt as though I had found a kindred soul to my own. I've never told or shown anyone what I told and showed you. I feel there is a special connection between us now, Hiei, and if we strengthened that connection, we could be an unstoppable union. What do you think?"

"Are you suggesting that we become lovers?" Hiei had asked.

She had laughed awkwardly and given him a funny look – one that he now realised was probably because she was thinking he was an idiot for stating the obvious and ruining the moment with his bluntness.

"Or are you just asking me for a fuck?" he had added. "Because I might be interested in that."

She had turned so pale and sat so still for so long, Hiei had wondered if his reply had killed her. Eventually she seemed to recover.

"I see," she had said, nodding tightly. "After learning everything that you have about me and my past, you think that I would be proposing that we just "fuck"? You think that I do this with every man in my service, perhaps?"

Hiei had shrugged, and at the time thought that she was probably only coming onto him because she had seen him naked – he was not an idiot, and he knew that he was, physically speaking, a particularly fine example of the male form, not to mention the fact that he was quite a powerful demon and offered to pass on his strong genes to any potential offspring. Those thoughts had briefly awoken the idea in his mind that she was after him as a father to her heir, and that had pissed him off – she had practically promised him that he was to be her heir, after all.

"I'm not going impregnate you," he had said. "I don't even want to make this a regular thing. I'll do you tonight, but that's it."

She had, at that point, grabbed one of his arms and flung him across the room like a rag-doll, once more reminding him how outmatched he was against her – a difference that was even more obvious back then when he was still just an upper A class demon.

But, as Hiei recalled, between asking Mukuro if she was suggesting that they become lovers and asking her if she was just after a quick liaison, he had paused, and he had thought her offer over. Obviously in this reality, he had decided to take her up on her offer, which a very, very small part of him had considered doing at the time.

"…Yes…" he said slowly.

"It's nice to see you again though," Yukina blandly replied. "You seem to be hurt. Is there anything I can do for you, Mister Hiei?"

Hiei looked back over his shoulder at the building Kuwabara had disappeared into.

"Would you heal the wound for me?" he asked, turning back to his sister.

"Certainly, Sir," she replied, bowing her head.

He wanted to tell her not to bother calling him "Sir", but he reasoned that there was no point: in a matter of seconds he would be back in his own reality anyway and it would not matter.

"But first," he said. "Tell me what the building over there is. Why does Kuwabara spend so much time in there?"

Hiei was not sure what sort of answer he had expected. He supposed he had been hoping that Yukina might tell him that the building contained some sort of secret vortex, a special passageway between or around realities, and that Kuwabara's presence there was why he was unaffected by the differences in all the realities Hiei had visited.

"Kazuma works there," she instead replied. "It's an architectural firm. He works very hard, but it's very difficult to be successful as an apprentice, and he hasn't had his lucky break yet."

Hiei looked over his shoulder again, but just looking at the bland, high-rise building told him no more than Yukina just had about Kuwabara's strange immunity to shifts in reality.

"He's been working very long hours lately because a very famous musician is looking for an architect to design a new house for him in America, and Kazuma's boss might get that contract," Yukina added. "Kazuma is trying to help make that happen, and if it does, his boss will leave the company, and maybe Kazuma will get a promotion."

"Maybe?" Hiei scoffed. "Typical Kuwabara, wasting all his efforts on a "maybe"."

Yukina lowered her head slightly.

"He works very hard and he takes very good care of me," she said quietly. "It's just so hard because he doesn't have much money. I'm still very proud of him though. He could ask me to cry hiruiseki for him to sell and earn his riches that way, but he never does. Kazuma is a very good man, Mister Hiei."

Hiei winced slightly as his sister met his eyes with a determined glare, her last words having come out quite forcefully, making her sound like one of the more fearsome elders of the ice village. He nodded curtly and began unwinding his bandages.

"Did Mukuro give you this wound?" Yukina asked as he carried out his task.

"Yes," he replied.

"Intentionally?" she asked.

"Yes."

Yukina eyed him over and he distinctly saw her eyebrows twist, but she said nothing. Clearly she was having as much difficulty as he was fathoming that he would want to be in a relationship with a woman who had complete control and dominance over him. He was looking forward to returning to his own reality because, quite frankly, in this reality, even though he had not encountered Mukuro herself, he had seen a side of her that he had never wanted to.

"Oh my, that's quite a deep wound, Mister Hiei," Yukina said, again failing to look as surprised as she was trying to sound.

In fact, Hiei thought wryly, the only time his sister had shown any emotion in this reality had been when she had been defending Kuwabara. Maybe that meant something. Or maybe not. Either way, Hiei did not really care.

"I'll try my best," Yukina said.

Hiei nodded, watching her hands as she moved them over his wound. This time around, either Mukuro had not hit him as severely or Yukina was stronger, because this time he saw her disappear part way through her task as he returned to his own reality, standing in exactly the same spot, his hands once more free, two hiruiseki around his neck, an empty sheath at his hip and the tattered remains of his black shirt clinging to his chest.

Hiei slowly turned around, checking that he was completely alone before daring to move. By luck he was alone – there were no humans nearby, no demons and, best of all, no spirit world Special Defence Force soldiers lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on him. He supposed that he ought to get back to demon world and order Mukuro to try again – though the thought did present a few problems to him. First of all, he was not sure that he was ready to face Mukuro again after having just left a reality where she liked to tie him up and lather him in olive oil. Secondly, he had just left a reality with no war, and he had not bothered finding out why, which was bound to make her mad at him. And, last and most importantly of all, he was once more in a reality where there was a Kakai Barrier between the living world and demon world, and he was, yet again, on the wrong side of it.

"Fuck," he sighed.

Hiei turned in a complete circle for any clue as to what he should do next, and, surprisingly, he found one. As he turned, he spotted a single human turning onto the street, riding a human contraption he thought was called a bicycle. Whilst it was not unusual to see a human on a bicycle, it was unusual to see a human that he could already sense possessed immense spirit energy. As the human got closer, Hiei started to realise why he was so strong: it was Kuwabara.

He looked exactly the same as he had in the reality Hiei had just left. Perhaps a little more harried and haggard, but he was still dressed in that terrible not-quite-blue-not-quite-black suit and gaudy yellow tie, he still had a haircut that was short enough to show what an oddly-shaped head he had and he still thought that an annoying little beard looked good on him.

He stopped by some other bicycles and began tying his own bicycle up alongside them. He was carrying four bags packed full of white boxes and he looked like he might not manage to take them to their destination, as he was apparently exhausted. He was pale, with dark circles under his eyes, and as he walked away from his bicycle, Hiei could see that Kuwabara had lost the ability to walk fully upright and in a straight line.

"Hey, Kuwabara!" Hiei yelled.

Kuwabara jolted at the sound of his voice and dropped one of the bags he was carrying. The contents of the bag spilled out onto the ground and Kuwabara groaned, dropping into a squat to try to clean up the mess, not even bothering to check who had called on him. Hiei growled in anger at being ignored and stomped over to him.

"Hey, Kuwabara!" he said again.

"I know, I'm sorry, just take it out my salary," Kuwabara muttered as he scooped up food items into the bag he had dropped.

"Kuwabara!" Hiei snapped.

Kuwabara finally lifted his head, his face changing as he caught sight of Hiei.

"Oh, hey…" he said slowly. "Do I know you?"

"Not important," Hiei replied.

He was not about to try to explain to this Kuwabara how they knew each other.

"I need you to break a barrier for me," Hiei told him.

Kuwabara looked about himself as though he was afraid that someone might have overheard, or as though he expected someone else to join the conversation.

"Look, I'm not that guy," he said, meeting Hiei's eyes again. "I know, a few years ago, there was a guy who looks a lot like me who vandalised a few places around the city, but it wasn't me, buddy. I don't break barriers – not parking barriers, not police barriers–"

"No, you idiot!" Hiei interrupted him. "The Kakai Barrier!"

"I don't know what a "kakai" barrier is, but like I already told you, vandalism isn't my thing," Kuwabara replied. "You've got the wrong guy."

"Stop fucking about!" Hiei yelled.

"Don't take that tone with me buddy, or I'll call the police, understand?"

Hiei closed his eyes and breathed deeply under his anger had subsided to a point that he could trust himself not to punch Kuwabara through the stupid building he worked in. When he opened his eyes again Kuwabara was depositing the bag of food he had dropped into the trash can Hiei had been hiding in whilst keying something into his cell phone. Hiei thought that perhaps he was following through with his threat to call the police, which would create the sort of chaos Hiei wanted to avoid as it might alert the Special Defence Force to his presence in the living world once more, which was something he was keen to avoid at all costs.

"Oh, hey Keiko," Kuwabara said into his phone. "I dropped a bag, can you send round another order for me? I know you don't usually do deliveries, but I'll pay extra… Yeah, some asshole came out of nowhere and started yelling at me and I just dropped it… I dunno, he's really short, he's got strange hair and he's wearing ripped clothes… I dunno, he knows my name though… Yeah, he's really ugly, too."

Hiei was in no humour to listen to someone as ugly as Kuwabara call him ugly, so he started to leave: but as he passed the front of the building Kuwabara had been aiming for, he noticed something just inside the foyer, and, his curiosity peaked, he pushed his way through the entrance doors and approached the display.

It was a poster about someone with a foreign name Hiei was unfamiliar with, but the end part of the poster captured his interest: apparently the person the poster was about was looking for someone to design a new home for him in America, and the closing date for proposals was only a few months away.

Hiei turned around and walked back outside, where he found Kuwabara gathering up the remaining three bags of food.

"Are you an apprentice?" he asked.

He had to know how similar his own reality was to the others – it was not that he actually cared about what Kuwabara did or was, because he did not care in the slightest about Kuwabara, just his apparent immunity to the changes in realities.

"Yeah, but I'm not ashamed of it!" Kuwabara moodily replied. "I know most guys my age have gone further in their careers by now, but I'm an apprentice at the most successful architectural firm in Japan, you little asshole! And my manager is working on a proposal for a famous musician, and when his design is accepted and he gets the job of building that property, someone in the office will get promoted into his job, and I'll get a promotion into that other person's job!"

"Do you work long hours?" Hiei asked.

"Yeah, but every apprentice does!" Kuwabara argued back defensively. "It's the only way to make a name for myself!"

"Why doesn't it affect you?" Hiei asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. "What were you doing ten years ago, when all this started?"

Kuwabara gave him a strange look before shaking his head.

"Look buddy, I have to get these lunches into that building," he said.

"Just tell me what you were doing ten years ago!" Hiei snapped.

"I was a freshman in college ten years ago!" Kuwabara snapped back. "Ten years ago right now I had just started studying to become an architect."

"…I see… And so you became an architect in every reality apart from the one where I married Botan… Why is that?"

"Look pal, if you don't back off, I really will call the police!"

Kuwabara sighed and muttered something derogatory about Hiei's height and intellect before disappearing into the building he worked in. Hiei did not bother following him: after all, he had learned all that he needed to. Everyone else around him lived slightly different lives in the different realities he had been to apart from Kuwabara. Only in the ideal reality had his life changed, and perhaps that change he had made in that reality was somehow a clue to what was wrong with his own reality, Hiei decided.

Maybe he should have listened when Mukuro was explaining how the alternate realities came about.

And, he thought miserably, since Kuwabara could not remember how to break barriers any more, he had no way of returning to demon world without letting the Special Defence Force catch him and send him back – and they would probably only do so after beating him or taking him there via spirit world and Koenma again. He tried to think of any unexplored third option he might have for returning to demon world, but none came. Eventually he forgot about his problem as yet another familiar human appeared on a bicycle, carrying a single white bag.

"Hiei?" Keiko said as she dismounted her ride.

"You!" Hiei replied. "You're different in each reality, obviously you're not the problem."

She pulled a face at him, which only made her look more ridiculous than she already did. She was dressed in the clothes of a kitchen worker, complete with a baggy hairnet and a white hat displaying the name "Yukimura Restaurant" on it.

"Screw you," she said, pulling something out of a pocket in her pants. "You're just another demon, and you demons are all bastards. Do you know, my entire life is a mess because of you demon bastards. After Yusuke left, I had to give up my job to help out my parents in the restaurant. It was only temporary, just until they got someone else… Then business went downhill because I'm not as good a cook as stupid Yusuke is, and now I'm stuck there! I had to sell my apartment because my parents couldn't afford to pay me, but if I'd gone back to my old job, they'd have gone out of business – but does Yusuke ever think of that? Hell no! "Oh, Keiko, the Kakai Barrier is going back up, no demon can ever visit the living world again, Keiko!" But look: you're here, so obviously that was just a transparent lie he told so that he could leave me!"

Hiei had started to turn away from her, not particularly caring to listen to her jealous rants about the loss of Yusuke Urameshi from her life, but as he noticed what she was doing, he suddenly turned back to her.

"Isn't that a spirit world device?" he asked.

"Yeah, one of those SDF guys gave it to me," she flatly replied. "He said if I saw you again I had to press the red button so that they would know where you are so they could arrest you."

"Fuck!" Hiei yelled. "Thanks for the help, bitch!"

"You're welcome!" Keiko sarcastically replied.

She really was a bitch in this reality, Hiei thought. Bitter, cynical, jealous, resentful – he doubted Yusuke would even recognise her any more. She certainly would not recognise him now that he had taken a slightly different physical form, looking far more like the late Raizen than the punk kid who had once been a spirit detective. As he thought, Hiei ran. He did not know where he was running to or even why – the Kakai Barrier was all encompassing, and there was no way through it from either side. If he did not let the Special Defence Force catch him, he would be stuck in the living world, which meant that he would never be able to get back to the right reality, and if he did let the Special Defence Force catch him he was almost certain that they would take him to Koenma again. For the third time. That day.

Hiei ran on.

He enjoyed a few minutes of peace before the soldiers started appearing. At first it was just one, and he soon lost him. But then another dropped in front of him. He escaped, but only narrowly, and only to find that he was being flanked by two more. Surely King Enma's elite troops had far better things to be doing with their time – especially when there was a war on in demon world – than to chase after one demon who Koenma was still pissed off at because of something he had done ten years ago?

Hiei jumped to avoid a blast aimed at his chest, only to be hit hard in the back by an attack from another direction. He managed to run on, but he had been slowed and weakened by the attack: apparently King Enma's elite troops did not have anything better to do with their time than to chase after one demon who Koenma was still pissed off at because of something he had done ten years ago. Hiei realised that he was going to be caught, and it was probably for the best, as it would ultimately get him back to demon world, which was what he wanted. He also realised that he should have healed himself back in demon world in the other reality to avoid this mess in the living world in his own reality, but he had never really been one for planning things ahead of time.

Accepting his fate, Hiei decided that he would just try one more thing before allowing the Special Defence Force to capture him: as he passed a clothes shop he snatched up a sweater and pulled it on. It was slightly too big for him and of a strange style, but he had not chosen it for size or style, rather he had chosen it for colour, to test out a theory that was brewing in the back of his mind.

The sweater was red.

* * *

"Hiei, I am getting sick of this!" Koenma ranted as Hiei was dragged into his office.

The prince was still in his adult form and now had a few excessive piles of paperwork on his desk and two large stamps immediately in front of him. He picked one up, his eyes flashing.

"Maybe I should use this on you!" he threatened. "It says "condemn", and that's what I feel like doing to you!"

"Hn, as if I care," Hiei snorted.

"And what's this?" Koenma added, holding out his hands towards Hiei. "Is this your attempt at being nice? You do understand that being nice and wearing a nice sweater are not the same thing, right?"

"I didn't know that you cared about my clothing," Hiei replied, smirking as Koenma became flustered at his response.

"I didn't mean it like that and you know it!" he snapped. "You've passed through the Kakai Barrier three times in one day, and it's third strike and you're out!"

"Hn, an empty threat from an empty vessel. They say that empty vessels make the most noise, and that's certainly true in your case."

"You should be mindful what you say, you're already in serious trouble, Hiei!"

"Nothing you can possibly do to me frightens me."

"Well we'll just see about that, shall we? My father knows about the problems you've been causing today, and he is not happy either. In fact, he has said that if you–"

Koenma stopped abruptly as something on his desk began beeping. He frowned at it curiously before giving Hiei a slightly nervous glance.

"I have to take this call," he said quietly.

He cleared his throat and then pushed a button on his desk.

"Yo," he said.

"Lord Koenma, George just told me that Hiei appeared in the living world again," Botan's voice answered him.

Koenma glanced at Hiei again.

"Don't worry about that, Botan," he said. "George is an idiot, he says a lot of things. You have other things to worry about right now."

"But Sir, I think it's more than a coincidence that Hiei has appeared in the living world three times in one day, especially after all this time," Botan insisted.

"Yes, I know what you mean…" Koenma replied, glaring across his office at Hiei as he spoke.

"So he is there?"

"Don't worry about it Botan, just finish what you're doing."

"But Sir, is Hiei there with you?"

Koenma looked across at Hiei again. Hiei grinned.

"Go on, answer her," he said, deliberately raising his voice.

"…Was that Hiei?" Botan asked.

Hiei's grin widened as he saw Koenma's face fall.

"Look, Botan, don't think about it," he said. "Just finish what you're doing, that's far more important than anything that's happening with Hiei."

"So he is there with you?" Botan asked.

"Yes, he is, but you shouldn't worry about it," Koenma replied, his voice gaining a slightly tense edge. "Just… Finish what you're doing."

"But Lord Koenma, I was–"

Koenma thumped his fist onto the button on his desk, cutting Botan off.

"Get him out of here," he instructed the soldiers flanking Hiei. "Send him back to demon world."

"Just like that?" Hiei asked, shirking out of the reach of the soldiers. "I thought I was in "serious trouble" with your father?"

"Get him out of here," Koenma said again to his men. "Now!"

Hands grabbed at Hiei and he let them take him from Koenma's office. He was sick of looking at and listening to the whiny prince, and at least Botan's intervention meant that he was being returned to demon world without consequences, which was what he had really wanted all along. Although he hated spirit world and everything and everyone in it – except for Botan – he did not really want to be at war with the Special Defence Force troops and Koenma.

The soldiers dragged Hiei along corridors of ogres and ferry girls who fled and hid to watch him from what they probably thought was a safe and discreet location: how foolish and naïve they all were, Hiei silently mused. He was being taken out of the temple, where, he assumed there would be other Special Defence Force soldiers waiting by a breach they had opened to return him to his own realm. After a while they stopped encountering ogres and ferry girls and the main temple door came into their view, still under repair from the damage Hiei had done to it early that morning when he had first arrived in spirit world after returning from the ideal reality and been brought there by the damn Special Defence Force.

"Wait!"

The soldiers stopped and so did Hiei. He could hear light footsteps running towards them from one side, and moments later a figure stumbled into his line of sight: and Hiei momentarily stopped breathing.

"Oh," Botan said as her eyes met his. "So you… You are here…"

If he had been lucid enough, he would have paid more attention to the way her eyes roved over him, but instead he was too caught up in studying her appearance. She was dressed in a very luxurious kimono with extensive and intricate embroidered details around the sleeves, shoulders and hem, her hair was swept up at one side of her head, hanging down in a curled ponytail. She was wearing the faintest hint of make-up, but it seemed more obvious because she was slightly red in the face for some reason.

"You look good," he growled, unable to stop the words from leaving his mouth.

"You look…" she began, eying him over again before meeting his eyes with a slightly startled looking, her face turning slightly redder. "I was… I had an important meeting with King Enma."

"About me?" Hiei asked.

He assumed that her reference to King Enma was, after all, the same as the one Koenma had made: that the ruler of spirit world was aware of and displeased by his continual appearances in the living world despite the presence of the Kakai Barrier.

"Not everything is about you," she said, some of the colour fading from her face and her eyes changing.

"Then what?" Hiei asked.

"It's not your business what I do," she replied. "But you should really be more careful. I'm surprised that Lord Koenma has let you go – though he is a very forgiving and compassionate man."

Hiei gritted his teeth and forced down the urge to tell her that, in fact, her precious Lord Koenma was a limp-wristed idiot that could never make her happy, since he did not want to antagonise her: she was speaking to him and looking him in the eye, which, in this reality, was a big improvement, and he was sensible enough to know that he would ruin that if he started insulting Koenma to her.

"I would like to know how you have managed to pass through the Kakai Barrier three times in one day though," she added. "And why you keep doing it, seeing the problems that it causes."

"It's not your business what I do," Hiei replied sarcastically.

Botan narrowed her eyes at him, and he saw her look determined and empowered for the first time in his own reality.

"Well you should take more care what you do," she said haughtily. "If you keep coming back to the living world, Lord Koenma might think that you like it there, and seal you there instead. Would you like that? Being stranded in the living world, surrounded by humans, unable to get back to demon world ever again?"

It was a complex question, as far as Hiei was concerned. In his own reality, obviously the answer was no: he could think of nothing worse than being stranded in the living world, surrounded by humans and stuck with a Kuwabara who could not remember him and acted more idiotic than before, a Keiko who was a bitter bitch and a Shuichi who thought he was still sort of Kurama. In the perfect reality however, being stuck in the living world would not be so terrible, since his wife and son lived there and so did his sister, and she was happy.

"With all due respect, Botan, Lord Koenma would not seal a dangerous demon like Hiei into the living world," one of the Special Defence Force soldiers at Hiei's side said.

"Of course," Botan replied, bowing her head politely to the soldier.

"And if he does reappear in the living world again, don't worry, we'll catch him again," the other soldier told Botan. "We always do. He won't threaten you there."

"I hope not," Botan said quietly, narrowing her eyes at Hiei again.

"Are you really happy collecting souls like a slave?" he sneered back at her.

"Not any more I'm not," she replied. "Which is why I've asked to become a spirit with a physical presence. King Enma has agreed to grant me the privilege because my reasons are noble, but first I have to spend ten years as a human in the living world – but I wouldn't feel safe doing that if you were going to keep showing up and destroying shops and pestering and confusing poor Kuwabara, Keiko and Shuichi."

Hiei ignored the end part of Botan's speech, his mind focusing only on the first part, which was more than a little disconcerting.

"You're becoming a human for ten years, and then a spirit with a physical presence?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes I am," she replied, raising his chin defiantly. "And I'm sure you'll probably just want to mock me for that because you hate humans and spirits."

"This isn't how it's supposed to happen," Hiei said quietly. "You were supposed to ask for that after you agreed to be my wife. What sort of mockery is this?"

"Hiei, you have to stop referring to me as your wife! It's starting to become offensive!"

"But that's how it works! You defy spirit world by asking to become a spirit with a physical presence because you want to be my wife! You become human for ten years, and during that time, you're able to have children, and that's when our son is born!"

Botan faltered visibly, almost staggering as one of her knees bent slightly.

"That's the only time you can have children," Hiei added, barely noticing her response. "And that's when you have my child!"

"H-how did you know that?" she asked. "How did you know that I can only have children during the time I'm in my human body?"

"Because, you idiot, you have my children during that time!"

Botan tilted her head and her face twisted through a range of emotions, but she mostly just looked upset.

"You can't possibly know that!" she eventually said.

"I do because I've seen it!" he snapped.

"Well you're wrong anyway!" she said, waving a hand at him, her excessively long kimono sleeve sweeping through the air and creating a gust of wind. "I didn't ask to become a spirit with a physical presence because of you! I did it because of Lord Koenma!"

"Oh bullshit!" Hiei snorted. "You did it so that you could be with me!"

"I did it so that I can be with Lord Koenma!" Botan snapped. "I'm going to live in the living world as a human for ten years and then I'm going to be a spirit and live here in spirit world with Lord Koenma as his wife!"

"…What?"

"Lord Koenma will one day take over from his father as ruler of spirit world, and when he does, he'll need a wife."

Hiei momentarily went blind and deaf. When his senses returned to him, there was a hole in the wall at his side and the two Special Defence Soldiers who had been flanking him were lying amongst the rubble. Botan was running from him sobbing as she went and calling out for Koenma. Hiei started after her, chasing her out of the temple, where, as he had expected, three Special Defence Force soldiers were holding open a small breach in the Kakai Barrier for him.

Hiei stopped, looking back at the still broken temple door and the fallen Special Defence Force officers beyond it, over at Botan who was still running crying from him and then at the open breach in the Kakai Barrier. He did not like the thought that he had just made Botan terrified of him again or the fact that she was taking her human trial for Koenma instead of him – that only made things even more detestable and impossibly far from right in his own reality – but he forced himself to focus on the paradise reality, where everything was as it should be, and he was only one more injury away from getting there.

And with that thought, Hiei leapt through the breach and started back towards Mukuro.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Mukuro is getting seriously annoyed that Hiei keeps wasting his time in the alternate realities and they have a fight over the matter and she reveals to him the truth about the other realities he has been visiting. Mukuro sends Hiei away again: to a reality that really makes him appreciate what she has explained about the rules of her attack. **Chapter 10 – The Common Denominator**

 **A/N:** I would like to point out that it may seem as though I am bashing Hiei paired with anyone else but Botan (and vice versa), but that's not the point of what I'm doing, and I hope nobody has taken any offence. I do actually see Hiei with Mukuro (though honestly, I see her as the dominant one) and I can see places where Hiei and Keiko would work, and I love Botan with Yusuke and even Botan with Koenma – the chopping and changing is really only being done as a tool to demonstrate something about those other realities that is quite crucial to the main plot of the story (which still hasn't started yet, when will I learn portion control?!)

Just keep watching! As soon as Hiei says "anything she does" the main plot will start, I swear!


	10. The Common Denominator

**Plot warning! There is actually plot in this chapter!**

 **Also early angst indicators warning**

 **Recap:** Hiei escaped a reality where he was Mukuro's lover and Kuwabara was still the same (ho-hum), he returned to his own reality where Kuwabara was still the same (ahem) and Keiko was messed up over Yusuke leaving her, and he was recaptured by the SDF and brought to Koenma, where he learnt that Botan is taking her human trial to be with Koenma and Hiei then had a little moment and scared Botan off with his rage. Again!

* * *

 **Chapter 10: The Common Denominator**

"Well?" Mukuro asked, giving Hiei a look that made him feel like a naughty child – another unnecessary reminder of the reality he had just returned from.

"Well what?" he asked.

"You're back very quickly, so obviously the war was present in the reality you reached," she replied.

"No," he flatly replied. "But it was still the wrong reality. She wasn't with Koenma, but she wasn't with me either. I think you sent me there deliberately. You sent me to the one where I didn't refuse you. Are you still bitter about that? Because if you are, sending me there was the wrong thing to do, because it made me realise that I did the right thing by refusing you."

Mukuro turned more fully towards him and slowly stalked up to him.

"Hiei, are you telling me that I sent you to a reality with no war – again – and that you did not find out why – again?" she asked slowly.

"…Yes, but that's not the point," he replied.

"That is exactly the point, Hiei!" she snapped. "And what the hell are you wearing?"

"It's a…"

Hiei looked down at the baggy red sweater he was wearing. It did look ridiculous when he saw it in the light of Mukuro's fortress, but he had his reasons for wearing it – he had been hoping that it would have had the same effect on Botan that it had in the other reality he had visited. After all, if he could get her to realise that she was attracted to him, all his problems would be over.

"This is a very serious matter, and you're fucking it up!"

Hiei's head snapped up and he suddenly found Mukuro standing mere inches from him, leering over him in a way that warned him that she was seriously upset this time.

"I sent you back so that you could find out why this war is happening, and, despite the fact that every reality I've sent you to has been free of war – which is something that has never happened for anyone else I've sent to another reality – you've failed repeatedly to perform this simple, simple task!"

"I know why the war is happening!"

"Oh do you? Very good! Tell me why then."

"Your naïve ambassador started this war!"

"Idiot! That's not what I meant!"

"Well it's the truth! In those other realities, your last ambassador was still alive to give that speech and he stopped the war before it began!"

Mukuro's face softened and her stance relaxed. Hiei smirked at her response.

"Simple," he said.

"Is that true?" she asked. "Are you telling me that the only reason the war didn't happen in those other realities is because Hitoshi lived to deliver the speech his pathetic replacement made?"

"Exactly," he replied.

"…Really?"

"In the first reality you sent me to, Yusuke and Kurama both said that Hitoshi averted a war with a famous speech he gave. And he's dead in this reality, so there's nothing we can do about it. This is the wrong reality, that's the problem. That first reality you sent me to was the only right one."

"You selfish, short-sighted, son of a bitch."

Hiei balked.

"What?"

Mukuro flashed her teeth at him before punching him in the gut. It was a very powerful blow and especially painful because he had already taken three shots to his gut over the last few days, two of which had come that morning, and even though the wounds had healed on the surface, he was still tender there. He fell back, making no attempt to stop himself but adjusting his position so that he could land flat on his back to distribute the impact of his landing and do as little additional damage as possible.

"You're so simple-minded sometimes, Hiei," Mukuro sighed. "It disappoints me. You don't understand at all, do you? There was a common denominator in all of the other realities I sent you to. Did you notice it?"

Hiei pushed himself up onto his elbows to glare at her.

"Of course I did!" he snapped. "I'm not simple-minded, actually!"

"Really?" she sighed. "Go on then: tell me what the common denominator was."

"It was Kuwabara!" Hiei replied. "That was obvious! He was completely unaffected by all the changes! He was a pathetic loser in every variation apart from the right one, which was the first one you sent me to."

"Apart from the fact that I have no idea who Kuwabara is, can you think of any other reason why that might be the wrong answer?" Mukuro asked sarcastically.

"I'm not wrong!" Hiei snapped. "Kuwabara was the common denominator!"

He got to his feet but Mukuro immediately punched him down again.

"It was you!" she yelled. "It was you, you fool!"

"It was not!" he argued. "I admit I killed Hitoshi, but it's not my fault that the war started! I wasn't the one who made that stupid speech!"

"I wasn't talking about that," she growled. "Though since you mentioned it, yes it was your fault. You killed my ambassador for no good reason and at a time of great political unrest. In the reality where you did not kill him, the war did not happen. Therefore you are at least partially culpable for the problems of this reality. But that was not the point that I was trying to make. I was trying to tell you that you were the common denominator in the other realities that I sent you to."

Hiei slowly stood up again.

"Me?" he asked, wiping the back of one hand at one corner of his mouth where he had spat on himself at her last attack. "That doesn't make any sense! You sent me to a reality where I was a husband and father, then you sent me to a reality where I was trying to be a human and then you sent me to a reality where I was your… Um… It doesn't make any sense! I was different in every reality!"

"You would be the single biggest difference in every reality because you're the one I used the attack on!" Mukuro replied. "The attack only affects the person I use it on!"

"Well no shit!" Hiei groaned. "I was the only one who travelled to the other realities!"

"And they were your other realities! Didn't you see that?"

"Wait… What?"

"Those other realities were unique to you. Nobody else could be sent to any of those realities, because the Dividing Realities attack only sends the victim to another reality that they could have created themselves. Every place you have visited so far has been of your own doing."

Hiei paused long enough to consider what Mukuro was telling him. Although he had not bothered learning about the prevention of the demon world war in the second and third reality she had sent him to, he had at least bothered to find out why and how those realities had come about, and, although they were massively different from his own reality in many ways, they could all be traced back to one common point in his own life. In the first reality the change had happened when he had decided to save Botan from the rock beast; in the second reality the change had happened when he had decided to kiss Keiko when she had asked him to; in the third reality the change had happened when he had decided to take Mukuro as his lover when she had offered herself to him.

And strangely, those minor changes had, over many years, caused other changes that had steadily gotten bigger and more significant and ultimately resulted in the realities he had found himself in.

"The snowball effect…" he muttered aloud. "Yes, I understand now…"

Mukuro groaned and cursed, apparently frustrated about something. Hiei gave her a funny look: she had been in a bad mood all day that day, and he supposed it was because it was the wrong time of the month for her. After all, there was no other reason for her to be so moody right then.

"The fact that I have sent you to three realities, and all three were devoid of war," she began, pacing about in front of him. "Proves that you are at least partly to blame for the war itself. I tested this move on seventeen others before I tried it on you. The first twelve disappeared and never came back, but I was still perfecting the move back then. The next five visited ten realities each, making a total of 50 unique realities, and every single one, although different, still brought them to a world at war. I was planning to send you away ten times in the hope that just one of those visits might take you to a reality where demon world was not at war. Just one would have been enough for us to get the information we need to stop this madness. And now you're telling me that I've sent you to three realities and none were at war, and yet you did nothing to find out how or why that was? Instead, you ran around chasing after a ferry girl, demanding that she start having your babies. Can you understand why I'm so severely pissed off right now, Hiei?"

"…No," Hiei replied.

Mukuro began groaning and snarling out curse words that made even Hiei feel awkward to listen to.

"Why don't you just send me back?" he asked. "Send me to that first reality you sent me to. The difference there was that I saved Botan from the rock monster. So think about that when you're sending me away, because that's where I want to go to."

"For a man of great intelligence, you don't have much common sense, do you Hiei?" she replied.

"…Just send me back," he insisted.

"I can't!"

"Yes you can."

"No I can't! Do you ever listen? I have no control over where you go!"

"But you said the realities you send me to are only realities that I was able to create, right?"

"…Right…"

"So there is a chance that you could send me back to a reality that you've sent me to before?"

"…A very minute, very improbable chance, yes."

"Then do it. I'll get there eventually."

Hiei held his arms out at his sides expectantly, but Mukuro made no attempt to start charging her attack. Instead she stopped her pacing and gave him an incredulous look.

"I'm not doing this so that you can find yourself a wife, you know," she said slowly. "I am doing this because I am trying to stop what's happening here and now, I am trying to do something that will benefit our entire world and meanwhile you are just trying to get laid with a ferry girl!"

Hiei sighed. Apparently she was still bitter about him refusing her. What a bitch.

"Either way, you need to send me back to that first reality you sent me to," he said. "There was no war there, and everything else was exactly as it should be. But this time, hit me really hard. I don't want to come back."

"You idiot!" Mukuro growled quietly. "That's not how it works! You have to come back! You tried to prolong your stay in that first reality, but as you saw, your own body will eventually betray you. Your own natural defences will eventually heal the wound, no matter how badly you try to keep it open!"

"…I can prolong my stay in another reality by keeping the wound open?"

"Yes, and I know that was what you were doing the first time I sent you away, because you were gone for almost two days, and this morning you visited two new realities and returned to me, proving that when you wanted to come back here, you were perfectly able to do so!"

Hiei had no idea why it had taken him so long to heal his wound the first time around, but he had not realised that he could prolong his stay by keeping the wound open. He had assumed that the wound somehow contained the energy or force that kept him in the other reality, and that it naturally ran out after a period of time, depending on how hard Mukuro had hit him. But this just made things even better: once he reached the right reality, he could just keep cutting the wound open to stay there. He would have to avoid sleeping too much and make sure that he cut himself quite deeply because, as Mukuro had said, his own natural defences would work hard to heal any injury, but that was all minor if it meant that he could stay with his wife and son again, Yukina would be free and happy, Yusuke and Kurama would be themselves again, Keiko would not be such a bitch and Kuwabara would no longer be a whining, bearded "apprentice".

"Okay, I understand," he said. "Send me away again."

"No," Mukuro said. "I'm not wasting any more time or energy sending you away. This attack was my last attempt at finding a way to end the war peacefully, and obviously it's been a failure. Which means I'm going to have to end this war aggressively. I have another plan to stop the fighting, but it's not an ideal one. I'm going to have to kill Kurama and Yusuke."

Hiei froze, all thoughts of other realities – including the paradise one – gone from his mind as he was suddenly reminded that his own reality really was a complete disaster. He had already accepted that Botan and Yukina – and even Keiko and Kuwabara – were beyond salvation in his own reality: they had changed so much so long ago and made so many other changes over the years that there was no way of undoing what had become of them. But Hiei had still believed that the war in demon world would eventually come to a conclusion, ideally without the deaths of Kurama, Yusuke or Mukuro.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, hurrying after Mukuro as she marched off.

"Something I should have done a long time ago," she said as she stomped noisily along the hallways of her fortress. "I kept delaying this because I really thought that I could change things, that there might be another way, and I thought that my Dividing Realities was the ideal way to find out how peaceful tactics might be able to work to stop this war by finding a reality where that had been the case, but clearly I was just wasting my time. I've lost good men and women in the fighting and in my experiments, but no more. I'm taking out the leaders of our opposition. It's the only way. Without strong leadership, the other factions will crumble and fall, and this will finally be over."

"What exactly are you going to do?" Hiei demanded, quickening his pace to keep up with her.

"I'm going to call for a one hour armistice on all sides," she replied, keeping her face forwards as she spoke, her features set in determination. "And while the fighting has stopped, I'm going to call Kurama and Yusuke out to talk."

"Right…"

"But we're not going to talk. I'm going to kill them."

"…You're going to call for a ceasefire and ask the generals of the armies we're fighting against to meet with you for peace talks, and then you're just going to kill them?"

"…Sort of."

"Sort of?"

Mukuro stopped abruptly and Hiei staggered a step past her, her abrupt halt taking him by surprise. He turned to look back at her expectantly, and almost wished that he had not when he saw the look on her face.

"When I say that I'm going to kill them, I don't literally mean that I will kill them with my bare hands," she said slowly. "I'm going to contain them somewhere and destroy them from a distance. There's a stretch of land between us all that is unaffected by the fighting, I intend to set a trap there and lure them to it."

"No-man's land?" Hiei asked.

"I believe that's what some people call it, yes," Mukuro agreed, crossing her arms and avoiding his eyes. "I just need some bait to get them there, then I can make it look like an accident."

"…Bait?"

Mukuro slowly met his eyes again and Hiei felt his blood run cold.

"You said that you wanted an honourable death, Hiei," she said quietly. "If you do this, you'll be bringing peace to demon world and taking out two of this world's biggest threats."

"You want me to go out into no-man's land and meet with Kurama and Yusuke so that you can kill all three of us?" Hiei asked.

Mukuro nodded.

"You were once a very close ally of both of them, more so than you were to me, as I recall," she said. "I would go myself, but I think they would be more likely to trust and accept an invitation from you. You're also the fastest demon I have left at my disposal, and you stand the best chance of getting there without being caught or killed beforehand. I would just need you to distract them for minutes."

"And what – you blow us all up?" Hiei asked sarcastically.

"Something like that, yes," she replied, much to his horror. "It's my only option. If I let this war rage on, we'll all be dead. This way the fighting will subside in the confusion. Without Kurama, Yomi will want to talk and without Yusuke, his council will be lost and directionless. It's the ideal chance to get them talking and to end the fighting."

"…And the ideal chance for you to take sole ownership of demon world…"

"That's not it at all, Hiei. If it was, I would be trying to take out Yomi. I believe Kurama and Yusuke are instrumental in forcing this war to continue longer than it needs to, and I don't know if they can be reasoned with any more, this had gone on too long… Maybe a few years ago, when this first started, maybe before it got so out of hand but not now, it's too late. This is the only way. I'm sure you understand though. They turned on you a long time ago and you've proven time and time again that you prefer violence to diplomacy. And you said that you thought your existence at it stands was pointless and that you sought an honourable death. Surely then this, for you, is an ideal solution: you get your revenge on Kurama and Yusuke for turning their backs on you, you get to prove that violence is the best answer and you get to have your honourable death."

Hiei slowly shook his head.

"What?" Mukuro asked. "Are you refusing to do this? It will take time to set this up, you've probably got a few weeks left to do anything you want to before you die."

"I can't do it," Hiei replied.

He felt as surprised as she looked at his words, but he knew that he meant them. If she had made him the very same offer the week before he would have agreed without question: as she had said herself, it was exactly the sort of closure he was looking for, in terms of confronting Kurama and Yusuke, in terms of proving that actions got better results than words and in terms of him achieving the honourable death that he had sought. But something quite significant had changed since then, and he was quite annoyed that Mukuro was expecting him to just forget about that.

"I can't leave my wife and sons," he said.

"What?" Mukuro echoed, her face scrunching up in a way that was both intimidating and highly unattractive.

"I can't leave my family," he said. "There has to be another way. Also… I don't think that killing Kurama and Yusuke will solve your problems."

"Is this you having another crisis of conscience, Hiei?" she asked. "Now? Of all times? You still can't decide whose side you're on: mine of theirs? Need I remind you that Kurama and Yusuke are also fighting against each other? Even they are not loyal to each other, they won't be loyal to you. Not any more, Hiei. It's too late. Too much has changed and this has gone on too long. It's too late for making changes. This is the only way."

"I disagree."

"I don't care what you think. I'm giving you an order to do this. Are you refusing to take orders now?"

"Yes."

It was the wrong answer as far as Mukuro was concerned, but Hiei was beyond caring. He was just as angered and disappointed with her as she was with him: really, all she had to do was send him to that paradise reality and all their problems would be solved, so why was she holding out on him now?

"Is that your final answer?" she asked darkly.

"Yes," Hiei replied.

"Then you and I are going to have a major problem."

* * *

Hiei staggered slightly when his feet touched the ground. He felt light-headed, but mostly in the sort of way he did when he had slept too much rather than because he was in any way weakened.

"How long was I in there?" he asked, glaring at a nearby medic who was offering him a bundle of clothes.

"I don't know, Sir," the medic replied. "Five days, maybe a week?"

"Fuck!" Hiei snarled, snatching his clothes from the weaker demon.

Apparently Mukuro had been really pissed off at him. They had fought, as he had expected they would, over her decision to sacrifice his life in a bid to end the war in demon world, but Hiei could not remember much after suffering a few nasty injuries from her Dividing Space attack. His body was completely recovered – which it would be after a week in a healing tank, he thought bitterly – but clearly she had left him in there longer than was necessary for him to be feeling so groggy upon coming back out.

"She did this to me deliberately," he grumbled, pulling on his pants without bothering to dry himself off first, making the task more awkward than it needed to be. "She just wasted my time so that she could set up her stupid little plan."

Hiei held up his shirt, eying it curiously before flinging it aside.

"Where's my red sweater?" he demanded.

The medic gave him a curious look and Hiei did not bother waiting to find out what he had to say on the matter.

"Forget it, it doesn't matter anyway," he said, retrieving his black shirt and roughly pulling it on over his head. "I don't take my clothes with me when I travel across realities, I'll get another one when I get back to paradise."

As he moved through the fortress, Hiei's senses began to return more fully, and he realised that he was starving and thirsty, but he did not care. Once he got back to the right reality Yukina would cook something for him and everything would be alright. He hurriedly sought out Mukuro, eventually finding her walking along the corridor outside of her own chambers, apparently on her way down to greet him.

"That was quick," she muttered as he stopped in front of her. "I didn't expect you to be up and about already. Never mind, we need to talk."

"Damn right we do," Hiei agreed.

"Come into my office–"

"No, let's just do this here and now. Send me back."

Mukuro drew in a deep breath and sighed slowly.

"I've been thinking a lot about that," she said. "And, since I gave the others ten chances to find me an answer, I'm going to grant you the same privilege."

"I only need one more chance," Hiei replied.

He was confident that his next journey would take him home – to the paradise reality.

"Well I'm giving you eight more chances," Mukuro said. "You've had two chances and you've wasted them – I'm discounting the first time I sent you to another reality because I didn't brief you beforehand – and so I'm allowing you eight more chances to get this right. If you can't find a reality without war or bring me back a better solution, I'm going to have to action my other plan, and I need you to agree that you will carry out that plan if my sending you to other realities does not work."

"Fine, I agree," Hiei agreed.

Not that it mattered, he thought to himself. He would just get back to the paradise reality and keep his wound open so that he never had to come back. Simple.

"Then let's go somewhere else–"

"Just do it right here, right now."

Mukuro gave Hiei a strange look but he ignored it.

"Get on with it," he added.

"Fine," she said. "Brace yourself."

Hiei merely smirked in response. He was finally going home and not before time. Mukuro charged up her attack as before, and, as before, he was hit with it and sent flying backwards. She had hit him a little higher up this time, the cross-mark dangerously close to his heart, but again the wound was not quite deep enough to be of serious concern to him. He flew back for some time before hitting the ground and rolling over, where he began falling down a flight of stairs. He quickly regained his senses and flipped himself over, landing at the base of the steps on his feet.

Hiei looked down at his left hand: he was not wearing a wedding ring, which was the first thing he saw that made him nervous and angry. The second sight that concerned him was the clothes he was wearing.

He was dressed in ceremonial battledress, the sort he rarely wore, and he was wearing a utility belt that was adorned with a worryingly large selection of tools.

Hiei slowly moved over to a nearby window. The roads of the border patrol were overgrown and disused, just as they were in his own reality. There were precious few personnel moving about in the yard outside the fortress, and in the distance he could see the flashes of conflict along the horizon. He was in another reality, but demon world was still at war, which meant that the Kakai Barrier was still up, Kurama and Yusuke were still his enemies, and Botan was not his wife.

"Fuck," he groaned.

* * *

Hiei had never been one to believe in luck, but he was starting to become superstitious as he found himself trapped: the only way to get back to his own reality was to heal himself, and the fastest way to do that was to get help from someone with healing powers or the appropriate remedies or to jump into one of Mukuro's healing chambers. So far, none of those options were available to him, and that meant that, until one of those options became available or until he naturally healed his wound himself, he was stuck in the reality he had been sent to. And it was not even a remotely good one.

After trying to get himself into a healing chamber – and promptly learning that half of the chambers had been destroyed somehow and the other half were all occupied – Hiei had met several other demons, from medics to higher ranking soldiers, and there was no denying what his role in this reality was. He supposed that his clothing should have been a major clue, but perhaps denial had stopped him from accepting the facts sooner: in this reality, he had somehow become the general of Mukuro's army, making him equivalent to Yusuke and Kurama in the ongoing war.

It was not a position that Mukuro had ever offered him, so he was starting to question her explanation about how the alternate realities she sent him to had come about. This was not something that he could have caused because he had never been offered the job to accept or decline it, nor had he ever even thought about asking for the job. He had felt slightly more optimistic about getting back to paradise when Mukuro had told him that the number of different realities he could meet came down to him and the choices he had made and could have made in his own life – that at least reduced the number of alternate realities from infinite to numerous – but now she had sent him somewhere that he could not explain, and, as the war was ongoing, the Kakai Barrier was up and so he had no way of going to the living world and demanding answers from anyone there.

Hiei had tried looking for Kurama and Yusuke, and his attempts had yielded the same results they did in his own reality: Kurama was impossible to find and Yusuke was concealed behind an array of conflicting energy signals. He had then tried to find a free healing chamber and failed and now he was making his way outside to the training yard, trying to ignore the way everyone he passed saluted him and called him a title he would really rather not own. He needed to get outside and find a place to be alone so that he could concentrate on looking for Yukina and Botan – and he had already decided that if he could not reach either of them, he was going to run away somewhere to nurse his wounds and try to speed his return back to his own reality.

Hiei had already accepted that this time he really might be stuck where he was for several days.

He had not encountered Mukuro yet in this reality, but he could sense that she was nearby somewhere. He could also sense that even fewer demons remained behind to guard her fortress in this reality, which was presumably a reflection on how he, as general of the army, had been pushing his own soldiers to the frontline of the war and into the other two territories. He did not even know if his method of attack and defence was any better or worse than Mukuro's methods back in his own reality. Knowing the desperate measures Mukuro was planning to go to in his own reality to end the conflict, he supposed it might be worth his time finding out if his leadership of the army worked any better, but that was a lengthy plan that would require a lot of physical and mental effort, both of which he would rather employ getting himself back to paradise rather than messing about in the wrong reality or even in his own reality.

The training yard was virtually abandoned, except for two very young A class trainee soldiers and a cleaner, which made for quite a depressing and uninspiring sight. Hiei quickly took himself as far away from them as he could get before sitting down on the ground and concentrating his efforts on locating Yukina. As always, it did not take him long to find his twin sister, and, as he had expected would be the case, she was in the ice village, in that little house that overlooked their mother's grave, and she was looking every bit as lonely and miserable as she did in his own reality. He then shifted his focus, looking for any traces of Botan, expecting that he would find her either carrying out her typical ferry girl duties around the living world or else undergoing her human trial to be with Koenma as she was doing in his own reality: after all, there was no foreseeable reason for her life to be any different from either of those two variations.

What Hiei did see was, as far as he was concerned, final proof that Mukuro had lied to him about the realities she was sending him to, because what had become of Botan in this reality could in no way be because of something he had done. In fact, what had become of Botan in this reality was so unbelievable, Hiei decided that he had to see it with his own eyes, that he had to physically go and meet with her to confirm that his jagan eye was not somehow deceiving him. And luckily going to visit her for proof was quite easy to do, even though he was in a reality where there was a Kakai Barrier and demon world was at war because Botan just so happened to be in the upper region of demon world itself.

Hiei took off out of the fortress and across Mukuro's land. He briefly thought that he was probably banned from the other two territories of demon world in this reality too, but he did not really care. If he was the general of an army that was pushing into those other two territories, he reasoned that nobody else was caring any more in this reality about a stupid ruling made too long ago. And he did not really need to enter into or even to cross over the other two territories to reach his intended destination, but he did have to traverse the wilderness that bordered Mukuro's land and led to both the upper region of demon world and, if he took a different route, Yomi's territory.

The wilderness that bordered Mukuro's territory (and, in turn, Yomi's territory) was, rather ironically, what was known as "no-man's land" in Hiei's own reality. It had always been called that by the bandits and merchants of demon world who travelled enough to have a degree of knowledge about the area, but since the war had taken hold, the name had become more widely spread, and for slightly different reasons. In Hiei's days as a thief, the name "no-man's land" had referred to the fact that none of the three rulers of demon world owned the land and nobody had a fixed resident on it because it was not an official part of any of the three territories, and so no man lived there. Since the war had begun, it had earned the title because no man who ever entered the area ever returned.

It was not known why.

But Hiei did not really care that the area was where many others had mysteriously disappeared, as passing through it made him think of only one thing: the plan Mukuro had revealed to him before she had put him into intensive care.

In his own reality, no-man's land was destined to become the place where Hiei, Kurama and Yusuke would all die.

Hiei pushed himself to run faster. He was not going to die there. Maybe someone else would, but it would not be him, because before things ever got that terrible in his own reality, he was sure that he would have managed to find his way back to the reality that he belonged in, the only right reality, the paradise reality.

Hiei could not decide if no-man's land was not a place where people disappeared in this reality or if he was simply immune to its effects, but whatever the case was, he made it clear of the wasteland and into the upper region of demon world, the one part of demon world that neither Mukuro, Yomi or even Yusuke had any claim over – not that they would want to anyway, as it was the one, albeit very small, part of demon world that was still owned and controlled by spirit world. It was the semi-permanent home of King Enma's irksome Special Defence Force soldiers and the site of the continuing struggle between the lower classes of demons and spirit world for complete ownership of a minute region of demon world that was both remote and outside of the influence of the three rulers of demon world proper. Even in the times of peace, when the Kakai Barrier had been left down after Kuwabara breaking it apart, the Special Defence Force had maintained a presence there and held their ground, keeping control of the small portion of the upper region that they had acquired.

It was the sort of place Hiei had sometimes visited as a child for amusement – watching from a distance, he had rather enjoyed seeing the lower class demons get what they deserved and equally he had taken delight in the knowledge that the spirits they fought against were the strongest that spirit world had to offer: and still they had nothing on the upper classes of demon world in terms of sheer might.

The upper region was relatively deserted and it was easy for Hiei to find the place he sought, partly because of those visits he had made there in his younger days and partly because the golden glow of the Kakai Barrier and the auras of the spirits guarding it were obvious even from a great distance away. He took himself as close to the barrier as he could get, only stopping when he reached the point that he could feel his hair reacting to the static in the air and the smell of the energy itself burning up small pockets in the air around the barrier was almost too much to bear. He then began running alongside the barrier, passing that curly haired female Special Defence Force officer, who barely gave him a second glance, presumably because she felt safe standing on the other side of the barrier, and because in this reality, she had never been sent to the living world to hunt him down like she had in his own reality.

Further along the barrier, Hiei finally found what he sought: the apparent leader of the Special Defence Force and Botan.

Hiei stopped in front of them, watching them silently as he tried to figure out what he was looking at and how it could ever possibly have come about. In the last alternate reality he had visited, Botan had told him herself that she was no fighter, but now he could see as clearly with his own eyes as he had with his jagan eye that she was a soldier of Special Defence Force.

"Oh my goodness," she said as her eyes finally landed on him. "Hiei? Is that you?"

As though to mock his entrapment within demon world as a demon, Botan casually passed through the Kakai Barrier in a way that he never could, bringing herself closer to him.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, eying him over curiously. "Aren't you the general of Mukuro's army now?"

"Apparently so, yes," he sarcastically replied. "What about you? What are you doing here?"

"I'm a soldier in the SDF now," she replied. "Or did you forget that again? Wait… You do know who I am, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Hiei replied.

"Oh really?" she asked, folding her arms and giving him a sceptical look. "Who am I then?"

"You're the mother of my children."

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei is in for more than few surprises from SDF Botan, including a pitfall of Mukuro's Dividing Realities that she had failed to warn him about and Botan's real feelings about what happened with the rock monster and the cave. **Chapter 11 – Not So Simple**

 **A/N:** There is so much exposition in this fic, it's becoming insane! Unfortunately, it's unavoidable… Anyway, hopefully this chapter will show why this fic is being told only from Hiei's POV: his bias and failure to notice a lot of obvious things going on around him are part of the charm of this fic. (Can I call this fic charming? Oh well.)

Also, just another reminder: this is angst, and it will get a lot more depressing yet…


	11. Not So Simple

**Smut warning. Not really sure what was wrong with me when I wrote the "stop looking at it" scene…**

 **Recap:** Hiei learned that he can prolong his stay in any given reality by keeping his wound open, he learned that the realities he visits are exclusive to him (ie they are created from decisions he has made in his own life), Mukuro told him of her plan to kill Kurama and Yusuke if his journeys to other realities don't give her the answers she is after and Hiei arrived in a reality where is the general of Mukuro's army and Botan is an SDF trooper.

* * *

 **Chapter 11: Not So Simple**

"You're the mother of my children."

Botan's eyebrows slowly moved up her forehead and her arms fell to her sides.

"Excuse me?" she said.

"What are you doing in those ridiculous clothes?" Hiei asked, ignoring her surprise at his earlier remark.

"This is my uniform, Hiei!" Botan replied. "I'm a soldier of the spirit world Special Defence Force, remember? I may not yet be as strong as the other soldiers are, but I'm well on my way. I've been training hard, and I've been doing this job for almost ten years now… I know we're still no real threat to an S class demon like you, but you'd be surprised at how much stronger I am… Assuming that you can even remember who I am to make the comparison, which obviously you can't, because you seem to under the delusion that I'm the "mother of your children"… I had no idea that you had any children, Hiei. And, if I'm being honest, that's quite a frightening thought. Both the thought of you as a father and the thought of children like you existing…"

"Bigger fool you, they're your children too!" Hiei snapped irritably. "If you insult my son then you're insulting your own son too!"

Botan slid a step back from Hiei.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, waving a hand at her ridiculous uniform. "You're not a fighter. And that uniform is hideous, I can't even see that shape of your b–"

Hiei turned his head downwards to one side as he abruptly cut himself off. He inwardly congratulated himself on having finally learnt to apply tact to his words. This diplomacy thing was perhaps not so difficult after all, he mused.

"…Okay…" Botan said slowly. "Well that's quite insightful, especially coming from a man wearing the insignia of a war hero, when, as I recall, you are anything but heroic."

Hiei slowly lifted his head, his eyes finding Botan's, the look on her face all too familiar to him.

"Hn, that's brave talk from a being as weak as you are," he said flatly. "Maybe you've forgotten how powerful I actually am."

"I wasn't questioning your power Hiei," she replied. "I was questioning your integrity."

Hiei waited for her to continue, feeling confused when she simply glared at him expectantly, almost as though she had been trying to provoke him into a fight.

"Aren't you going to say it?" she eventually said when he did not speak. "You usually do. Although it's been a while since I last saw you, maybe you've forgotten. It always was easy for you forget about me, wasn't it, Hiei?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replied. "You seem to be confused."

"I'm not confused, I'm just disappointed," she said. "And you know why."

"No I don't."

"Yes you do."

"No I don't."

"Yes you do!"

"…Alright fine! I've forgotten. You'd better remind me why."

"I'm disappointed because you forgot about me. Quite literally."

Hiei again waited for Botan to continue, but again she appeared to be waiting for him to speak, her body squaring and stiffening defensively as though she was expecting a violent outburst from him at any moment: what sort of reality was this, he wondered? How could something he had done ever have made Mukuro want to make him the general of her army and Botan want to become one of those whiny, do-gooder Special Defence Force officers?

"You're supposed to be my wife," he told her.

He did not really even care why she was what she was now, the facts were still the same: she was supposed to have married him, she was supposed to have given him Monzan and she was supposed to be carrying his second son. And despite that all being quite obviously the way that things were meant to be, she looked confused and even a little angry at his words.

"Your wife?" she asked. "Did you just say that I am supposed to be your wife?"

"Yes," he replied.

"And why would that be?" she asked. "Why would I want to marry you? I'm afraid you'll have to remind me what it was that you did that made me fall in love with you, since I seem to have forgotten…"

Hiei growled quietly under his breath. Sarcasm did not suit Botan, and presumably it was something she had picked up being around those cynical Special Defence Force soldiers.

"You fell in love with me in the cave," he patiently replied.

"The cave?" she echoed. "What cave?"

"The cave we hid in after the rock monster nearly killed me!" he said, his patience quickly fading.

"After the rock monster nearly killed you?" she repeated, her face changing suddenly. "Well now, that's certainly an interesting twist to the tale! I thought that you ran away from the rock monster – while it was killing me!"

Hiei stopped. He was surprised that she knew about the rock monster at all, since he himself had not even known whether or not they had encountered it in this reality: but that thought made him realise that he probably should not have started yelling at her about the paradise reality as if she would know what he was talking about, especially since all he had achieved was to confuse and irritate her and to get the attention of the other Special Defence Force soldiers, who were starting to gather behind her on the other side of the barrier.

"I didn't save you from the rock monster?" he asked quietly.

"No, you most certainly did not, Hiei!" she snapped back. "I screamed at you to help me, you stopped, looked back, smiled and then ran on and let me die! And you were terribly rude to me in Lord Koenma's office afterwards!"

Hiei tilted his head slightly, his confusion growing to the point where he was finding it hard to contain it any longer. So far, this reality sounded exactly the same as his own: so then why was he the general of Mukuro's army and why was Botan a Special Defence Force soldier?

"And why do you never remember this?" she added. "And why am I always surprised that you never remember this? You didn't even think that I was real when Lord Koenma asked you to apologise to me!"

"I didn't think that you were real," Hiei replied, simply saying the first thing that came to mind. "I thought that you were just a soulless puppet spirit world used to ferry human souls to the afterlife."

"I know you did!" she roared. "And that's why I can't forgive you!"

"But I don't think that any more," he pointed out.

"Oh really? That must be a recent change of heart then."

"It is."

Botan yelped out a noise of indignation and turned to her colleagues, pointing at Hiei and shaking her head. She was starting to piss him off: she was acting shamefully and like a resentful child, and he was not really sure that he wanted a woman like that raising his children. He wondered how he could tell her that she was setting a bad example for Monzan.

"What do you want, Hiei?" she asked, turning back to him. "Why are you even here? Shouldn't you be off fighting Yusuke and Kurama?"

"So Yusuke and Kurama really are the same here," Hiei muttered. "And probably Kuwabara is the same too, he always is…"

"What?" Botan echoed.

"Do you mind, woman?" he snapped. "I'm trying to figure this out, and your nagging is unnecessary and distracting for me!"

"Oh, I'm sorry Hiei!"

Hiei faltered slightly. Botan looked and sounded genuinely apologetic, which completely contradicted everything she had been saying and doing before that moment.

"Did you see what I just did there, Hiei?" she asked, pointing at her face. "I apologised like I meant it!"

Her face dissolved back into the look of angered disgust she had been giving him before she made her last remark, and Hiei silently noted that, in this reality, Botan was a far better liar than she had been in the last reality he had met her in, where she had been unable to hide her true feelings in the slightest. Clearly something had happened to change her in this reality, and it probably had something to do with those Special Defence Forces bastards or that little brat Koenma.

"You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you?" she asked quietly. "Here I am, torturing myself over this, and you don't even remember…"

She sighed and hung her head, her anger fading. She started to look quite upset, and it was almost a relief for Hiei, because it made her look more like how he knew her in his own reality.

"Never mind," she said, lifting her head again. "I have to get back to work, and I'm sure that you do too."

"Wait!" Hiei said, grabbing at her arm desperately.

He caught hold of her a little harsher than he had meant to, and he could tell by the way she stared down at his hand around her elbow, the whites of her eyes clearly bordering the pink of her irises and her throat visibly moving as she quietly gulped, that she was afraid and upset at his actions, but he stubbornly held on.

"I came here to see you," he said.

She lifted her eyes to his, studying him curiously before attempting a sarcastic smile.

"Oh, of course you did!" she said. "You can't even remember me, but here you are, come all this way just to… See me…"

Her words had been sarcastic, but her tone was anything but that and her expressions were slowly betraying her: it was all an act, apparently.

"I did come here to see you," he said. "Why else would I come here?"

"Well usually you just come here to try to pry information out of us about what's going on in Yomi's territory," she muttered.

"You can see into Yomi's territory from here?" he asked.

Botan narrowed her eyes at him and Hiei quickly shook his head.

"No," he said. "Not that. I just needed to see you."

"Why else would you need to see me?" she asked.

"Because I… I need some answers."

Botan rolled her eyes.

"So this is about you trying to get me to spy on Yomi!" she said.

"No!" he snapped. "Just tell me more about the rock monster."

"Why? Because it meant so little to you that you forgot about it? Again?"

"…Whatever. Just tell me about it."

"It was summoned to kill you, it caught me, I cried out to you for help, you ran off and left me, it killed me. There, is that what you needed to know?"

Hiei sighed. Clearly there was no reasoning with Botan on the matter. She was so bitter about the whole thing, even in another reality: though a very small part of him did sympathise, because when he thought about anyone else leaving her for death the way he had, he became furious. That was his wife and the mother of his children, after all.

"Why did you become one of them?" he asked instead, glaring pointedly at the other Special Defence Force soldiers still lurking beyond the barrier as he spoke.

"Because I didn't want to ever be in the situation where a rock monster killed me again," Botan replied. "The things you said to me that day made me realise two things: first of all that I was, as you said, weak and useless in a situation, and secondly that you are an insensitive jerk who is completely incapable of apologising or admitting when he's wrong."

"Would it have made any difference if I had apologised to you?"

Hiei ducked, surprised at just how close Botan came to slapping him across the face. She certainly did seem to have grown stronger and faster spending time around the Special Defence Force. He could not even tell why she had suddenly become so irate: he was only asking what he thought was quite a valid question after all. He had let the monster kill her, and apologising really would not have taken away from that any. He realised that he was wrong to have insulted her the way he had in Koenma's office that day, but if he had apologised as she had asked him to, it would not have changed anything: surely she could see that?

"I knew you were faking!" she said suddenly. "I knew you didn't mean it! You just pretended to apologise that day so that Lord Koenma wouldn't ban you from the living world and so that Yusuke and Kurama wouldn't get you banned from the rest of demon world!"

"…What?" Hiei grunted.

"You never even said the words "I'm sorry" yet," she continued. "What was it that you said? It was something ridiculously contrived… Oh yes, I remember – even if you don't – it was: "I would be regretful if I let an important living soul die". But you had already said that you thought I was not important and not a living soul, so that apology was completely redundant! Lord Koenma, Yusuke and Kurama might have accepted it, but I never did, and I never will! The only part of what you said that day that I did take to heart was when you told me that I should have been strong enough to save myself or else I should not have bothered going on that mission. I've made it a point ever since then to become strong, because on that one point you were right, Hiei. I'm big enough to admit when I'm wrong, even if you're not."

Hiei was barely listening to Botan any more. Something inside of him had snapped, and he paused only long enough to try to think who he was the most angry at before letting his anger out.

"Fuck!" he yelled.

Botan leapt back a step from him, her face quickly changing into that same look of fear she gave him in his own reality.

"This is it?" he shouted. "This is what would have happened if I'd apologised? This? Everything's just as bad as before! The only difference is that I've got a pointless title and you're dressed like a man! You said that if I apologised you would forgive me!"

Hiei glared at Botan expectantly, and as she backed up through the Kakai Barrier, he finally lost what little self-control he had been holding on to. He leapt into the air and cried out in sheer frustration, punching a fist downwards as he landed, blasting a crater into the ground and creating a small earthquake. The destruction and the pain of the rock tearing at his skin gave him a small measure of relief, but it was not enough. He almost felt willing to throw himself through the Kakai Barrier, to chance the pain of touching it in the vain hope that he might somehow manage to overcome it. He wanted to break everything around him and he wanted to fight: and apparently he was going to be able to fulfil one of his desires, as the Special Defence Force soldiers were marching through the barrier and surrounding him.

Hiei grinned and leapt up, gladly fighting them off with his bare hands. He was getting tired of being patient and being careful with his words and restraining his actions. This was something he felt far more comfortable with. A few of the soldiers managed to get in a few lucky shots at him, but he actually relished every bit of pain he felt, because it was something that he understood and something that he knew how to deal with. He loved every second of beating down those fools who had taken so much pleasure beating him down in his own reality until something quite terrible happened.

Their leader punched him hard in the gut, his armoured fist catching on the gashes over Hiei's chest and tearing them wider and deeper down over his abdomen.

Hiei went numb. He let himself fall to the ground, barely caring that he was in pain and bleeding quite profusely: with the wound widened, his time in that reality had now been lengthened, and he could feel that the damage had been quite extensive, meaning that he was probably now stuck where he was for the next week at least.

"Stop!" he heard Botan shouting.

He vaguely saw her dropping to her knees at his side and grabbing at his clothes. She tore the fabric with surprising strength and speed, and the look on her face as she saw the cross-marked laceration he bore made him momentarily forget about his concerns. She moved her eyes to his and a strange look of recognition and realisation passed over her eyes before she did something Hiei thought was probably the most unexpected, embarrassing and bizarre thing ever to have happened to him: the former ferry girl grabbed her arms around him and pulled him over her shoulder before launching them both into the air.

Being carried by a woman, being carried by a former ferry girl, being carried by a spirit or being carried by an officer of the spirit world Special Defence Force: Hiei could not decide which interpretation of his circumstances was the most humiliating. His only slight consolation was that Botan flew remarkably fast and soon landed again, far away from her peers and the Kakai Barrier itself, landing in a crouch as Hiei had seen the other Special Defence Force soldiers do. She carefully lowered him down onto the ground again, lying him on his back, her hands then immediately moving to his wound.

"Oh my…" she muttered as her delicate fingers carefully parted the torn material of his clothing, peeling it back from the bloody mess underneath.

Hiei jerked involuntarily as she slid her hands up under his clothing and then dragged her fingers around the edges of the wound, exposing it entirely to her view. Her hands lingered at the base of the wound for a little while, and Hiei began to wonder if her actions were deliberate: with her fingers pointing downwards, she was only inches away from touching him somewhere she only ever had in the paradise reality.

"Oh, Hiei," she said in a low voice.

Her hands slipped out of his clothes and he was finally able to relax. He steeled himself to look her in the eye, but she was still staring at his wound, her mouth hanging open in wonder.

"Hn, I'm sure you've seen worse," he grunted.

"The Dividing Realities."

Botan's words had been barely more than a whisper, but Hiei's head snapped up and he hurriedly dug his elbows into the ground to hold himself up enough that he could look directly at her.

"What did you just say?" he asked.

"This wound," she said, meeting his eyes. "It's from the Dividing Realities. You're acting strangely because you're not my Hiei, you're another Hiei, from another reality."

"I am your…"

Hiei stopped himself partway through his response, because he was, of course, not her anything in this reality, and also he had just noticed that her touch had unfortunately caused a physical reaction in him, one that was not subsiding any time soon: but thankfully she appeared not to have noticed that.

"What do you know about the Dividing Realities?" he asked instead.

"It's Mukuro's new attack," Botan quietly replied. "She told Lord Koenma about it. She said she was working on an attack to split reality, a method of sending an individual to another reality. She said she was hoping to send someone to a reality where there was no war in demon world, because if she could find a reality where it hadn't happened, maybe she could figure out a peaceful way to end the fighting in this reality. That's what that is, isn't it? It's the Dividing Realities! Mukuro used the attack on you, and it's sent you here, to this reality!"

Hiei could hardly believe what he was hearing: Mukuro had spoken to Koenma about her Dividing Realities attack? Had she done that in his reality too?

"Oh dear, but Lord Koenma wasn't supposed to tell me!" Botan said, covering her mouth with one hand. "It was supposed to be a secret, but I overheard some of it and I made him tell me the rest! I'm such a no–"

"Nosy little kitten, right," Hiei finished for her.

Her face dropped.

"How did you know that I would say that?" she asked. "Did you read my mind?"

"I didn't need to," he replied, smirking to himself.

Botan's face shifted through a range of emotions before she spoke again.

"It's quite terrible," she said softly.

Hiei groaned involuntarily as she started touching her fingers at the unharmed skin around the edge of his wound again.

"Is it very painful?" she asked.

"Fuck yes," he replied.

"Oh dear it does look painful," she said.

Hiei realised that they were talking at cross-purposes, but he was beyond the point of being able to correct her. She was, of course, talking about the newly widened, crossed gash over his torso, whereas he was talking about the increasing discomfort of his inappropriately timed and rapidly hardening erection straining against the fabric of his pants.

"It's strange, you know you even look different," Botan said, still oblivious to the full extent of his sufferings under her feather-light touches. "Your expression and even the way you carry yourself is different. It must be an amazing experience to visit a completely different reality like this… Am I an SDF officer in your reality too?"

"No," Hiei managed to reply.

"Interesting…" she said. "Wait… You called me your wife – oh my goodness, are we married in your reality?"

Hiei froze as Botan's eyes met his. He could tell her truth, he thought. He could tell her that, in his reality, things had gone almost as badly as they had in this one, except that he had refused to apologise to her for letting the rock monster kill her. It was the honest answer, after all.

"Yes," he said. "You're my wife in the other reality."

She was his wife in the other reality, he assured himself after the words had left his mouth. Just not in his own reality: but this Botan did not need to know that.

"Really?" she squeaked. "Oh my goodness! I married you? You married me? Wow, what a strange reality that must be! What sort of reality could I possibly have – oh gracious!"

Hiei winced as Botan's eyes doubled in size and suddenly locked onto his crotch. He had hoped that she would not notice his little problem there, but her noticing it and staring at it unblinkingly in a sort of impressed fashion was only making it worse.

"Is that…?" she asked, pointing at what her eyes apparently could not leave.

"My penis, yes!" he snapped irritably.

She gasped, but still did not look away.

"That's despicable, Hiei!" she said.

"Well stop looking at it, then!" he retorted.

"I can't, it's so… That's despicable, Hiei!"

"Seeing you looking at it like that is turning me on and that's making it worse so just stop fucking looking at it!"

Botan gasped again and finally turned her head, moving her eyes to his face.

"Hiei!" she said in a disapproving tone.

"You're my wife!" he said defensively. "In the other reality, you'd be pleased to see that! In the other reality, you'd have put that in your–"

Hiei's voice was cut off as Botan managed to slap him across the face. It was not an especially sore hit – in fact, he was sure that she had not even been using all of the strength she possessed in this reality – but by the look on her face it was the best that she could have managed, as she was apparently quite embarrassed and upset by his words.

"I'm not your wife in this reality," she said quietly. "In this reality, you let me die. Maybe in your own reality you treated me differently, but in this one you let me die when I was in my human body, and you only apologised because Lord Koenma made you do it, and you didn't even say it nicely or like you meant it."

Hiei lowered his eyes to one side to avoid having to see the hurt in her eyes. He was sick of seeing it over and over in every reality he visited. He just wanted to see that loving look she had always given him in the first reality. That look that had made him feel as though he was finally home: which was strange to him, because he had never really thought about having or even wanting a home before, but when Botan had looked him in the eye in the paradise reality he had just known that he was exactly where he was meant to be, and that, he assumed, was the definition of home.

"What happened in your reality?" Botan asked.

Hiei tried to sit up, but between the now gaping wound in his abdomen and the tension in his groin he found himself stuck on his elbows and eventually gave up.

"We got married," he said flatly. "We have a son and you're pregnant again."

"We have a son?" she echoed. "Did we call him Monzan?"

"Of course we did – wait, how did you know that?"

"Well, I…"

Botan sat back onto her heels and lifted one fist to her mouth, her eyes looking away from Hiei. She looked nervous and worried, but, Hiei told himself, it was at least an improvement on the fearful hatred her eyes had been filled with moment's earlier.

"I never thought that I would be a mother," she said softly. "I was a ferry girl and now I'm one of King Enma's guards, it was something that was never meant to happen… But I did still sometimes think about it. I did always want children. And I always knew that if I had a son, I would name him Monzan, after Monzan Kadokura."

"That happened in this reality too?" Hiei asked.

He felt stupid the minute the question had left his mouth: of course that had happened in this reality too. Botan had told him that she had met Monzan Kadokura during the Edo Period, and that had been before Hiei himself had even been born, which meant that, for it to be true in any one of his alternate realities, it had to be true in them all: including his own reality.

"Yes, I see…" he muttered pensively.

"I really have a son?" Botan asked. "We really have a son? Really? And his name's Monzan?"

"Yes," Hiei confirmed, meeting her eyes again.

"How old is he?"

Hiei hesitated. He had no idea how old Monzan was. He struggled for several seconds, the gradually sceptical look creeping onto Botan's face doing little to ease his nerves. Then suddenly he remembered a conversation he had held with Kuwabara – how ironic, he thought, that Kuwabara was to be his saviour in such a moment.

"He's almost four years old," he said, quoting Kuwabara exactly.

"Oh my!" Botan gushed, smiling slightly. "How wonderful! What does he look like?"

"He looks just like–"

Hiei quickly stopped himself mid-answer as he remembered how badly the Botan of his own reality had reacted when he had told her that their son looked just like him, and so he corrected himself by using some of that thing called tact.

"He has blue hair," he said carefully.

That was at least true, the boy did have blue hair – it was a very dark, midnight blue and nothing at all like Botan's, but it was certainly not as black as Hiei's own hair was.

"Really?" she asked, her smile widening. "What colour of eyes does he have?"

"Red," Hiei replied.

Botan's smile faded slightly and Hiei again corrected himself.

"A sort of pinkish-red," he said.

Again it was not really a lie, as the boy's eyes had not been the same blood-red that Hiei's own were, though they were a far cry from the magenta hue of his mother's.

"Does he have spiky hair like you?" Botan asked.

"...Yes," he replied as he failed to think of any way to dress that fact up.

"With a white star in his hair like you too?" she asked.

"…Yes," he said, again failing to manufacture a better answer.

"Oh my goodness, how cute!"

Hiei's arms almost slipped out from under him in surprise as Botan clapped her hands together and grinned so widely her eyes were pressed shut by her cheeks.

"…Yes…" he said slowly, quirking an eyebrow at her response.

"And I'm pregnant again?" she asked, her smile dropping and her eyes suddenly opening out wide. "Is it a boy or a girl?"

"I can't tell you, you made me promise not to."

"Oh yes, I wouldn't want you to spoil the surprise, but I probably will ask you a lot, and you'll have to try not to tell me, and you'll sit there keeping it all secret, and it'll drive me crazy, but I'll be so frustrated, and you'll be…"

Botan and Hiei exchanged confused and curious looks.

"That makes a lot more sense than it ought to," she said, her tone almost mechanical.

"…Yes…" he agreed.

"…Huh…"

They both turned from each other, and stayed that way for some time and in silence. Hiei finally managed to calm himself, but the result of doing so was that could feel how badly torn the wound in his chest was.

"I'm stuck here now," he muttered.

"Why?" Botan asked him.

"The wound…" he said, pointing at it but still not looking at Botan. "I can't leave this reality until it heals."

"Oh dear," she said. "In our reality, Mukuro wouldn't use the move on you because she said it sends the victim around several different realities at random until they die."

"I can understand that."

"Is it the same in your reality? Are you being sent around many different realities?"

"Yes."

"Oh no, then you'll die too!"

"Probably."

"Aren't you scared? It sounds so terrible: travelling around from reality to reality with no control until you finally reach a reality where you're dead, and you're transported into a dead body and then bam! That's it! You're dead too!"

"What?"

Hiei turned his head sharply to Botan.

"I think it's awful," she replied. "You could die, and all you want is to get home to your son and your wife, who also happens to be me… Is it weird for you to see me like this?"

"…What?"

"Is it weird for you to see me–"

"No, not that! What did you say about going to a reality where I'm dead?"

"Well, that's the downside of the attack, isn't it? Every time you get hit you take the risk of ending up in a reality where you're already dead, and so you yourself die too?"

Hiei was going to kill Mukuro. Forget her plan about killing Kurama and Yusuke to end the war, Hiei was going to kill Mukuro because she had lied to him – and maybe that would have the added bonus of also ending the war.

"…Mukuro never told you that part?" Botan asked carefully.

"No she fucking well did not!" Hiei roared.

He was on his feet before he remembered that he was still hurting. He staggered slightly and again found himself at the mercy of soldier Botan as she grabbed an arm around his waist and caught his weight as his legs gave way beneath him.

"I don't understand why she wouldn't tell you something as important as that!" Botan said as she put her other arm around Hiei and gently lowered him down to sit on the ground again.

"I do!" Hiei growled. "She lied because she knew that it was the only way to make me do it! She said something about trying the move on others and them never returning, this must be why!"

"Well at least you're still alive so far, right?"

"So far?"

Hiei glared at Botan and she grinned back at him nervously. He realised then that it was pointless for him to argue the matter with her, since she was not the one responsible for his circumstances. However, this was an added complication he was going to have to factor into his attempts to get back to paradise: now every time he was sent to another reality he was going to have to face the possibility that he might die in a quite pathetic way.

Though death by being sent to a reality where he was already dead was still slightly better than death by luring Kurama and Yusuke into a sorry little death-trap, which was the fate he faced in his own reality if he did not manage to get back to the paradise reality.

"It doesn't matter anyway," he concluded aloud. "I have to get back to the right reality."

Botan gasped and he turned to her, expecting to receive another admonishment of some kind.

"That's so gallant of you!" she said instead. "Do you really love me that much? I mean the other me, the one from your reality?"

Her words were strangely ironic to Hiei as he considered the true relationship that he shared with the Botan of his own reality, but he did not bother correcting the Botan of this reality on that point.

"I really can't imagine that we would have become husband and wife," she said. "How did it happen?"

"I saved you from the rock monster," he replied.

She gave him an odd look that made him feel far more uncomfortable than he thought that just a mere look ought to have.

"No, really," she said slowly. "How did it happen?"

"I saved you from the rock monster," he repeated, deliberately talking slower to ensure that she heard him correctly.

"…Really?" she echoed, her face changing again in a way that unsettled Hiei.

"Yes, really," he insisted.

"Well, whilst I am glad you did save me from the rock monster in your reality – because honestly, I never have forgiven you for that, even though you did pretend to apologise, and I don't think I ever will forgive you either – I can't honestly say that I would have wanted to marry you just for doing that for me."

"What are you talking about? I saved your life!"

"Yes, and though would probably have made me less afraid of you than I always was, it wouldn't make me fall in love with you."

"But I saved your life!"

"Yusuke saved my life more times than I can remember. So did Kurama. And Kuwabara. And Genkai revived me when I was hit by a bookcase. But I don't want to marry any of them."

Hiei glared at Botan intensely for several seconds, expecting her to tell him at any moment that this was one of her jokes or that she just trying to annoy him because, in this reality, she was still mad that he had not saved her from the rock monster and that he had faked an apology afterwards. But, despite giving her his most intimidating glower, she did not falter.

"So why did I fall in love with you?" she asked.

"In the cave," he said, the answer suddenly returning to him. "It happened in the cave."

"Right…" she said, nodding slowly. "What cave?"

"The cave we…"

Hiei really had no idea what the story about the cave was. He had, of course, only heard Botan briefly mention it in the paradise reality, and he had since only been able to guess what had happened then and there to make them end up marrying each other afterwards.

"I was mortally wounded, and you healed me in a cave," he said. "I showed humility and it made you love me."

"I can't imagine you ever showing humility," she said. "That would definitely change my opinion of you."

Hiei almost wanted to laugh that the whole thing was so simplistic: just because he had been hurt and forced to rely on her healing powers she had turned her back on spirit world and Koenma and become his wife, with the intention of living out her days in demon world with him and their children.

Maybe, Hiei thought, if he let Botan heal him in his own reality she would realise that she was supposed to be taking her human trial for him and not that idiot Koenma.

"When did you realise that you were in love with me?"

Hiei met Botan's eyes, the hopeful look on her face doing little to ease the mounting tension in his gut. It was a reasonable question for her to ask him, but he really had no idea how to answer it. He supposed that the honest answer was that he just wanted to be with her after hearing about the lengths she had gone to for him and because she had given him one son and was on her way to giving him a second son. And although that was the honest answer, he could tell by the look on Botan's face that she was waiting for an answer that was not quite so practical or reasonable.

"Well…" he began, turning from her as he realised that lying to her was proving increasingly difficult, especially when he was looking her in the eye.

Hiei was more relieved than embarrassed when the silence was broken by his stomach growling, reminding him that he had not long left a healing chamber back in his own reality, where he had been unconscious and not eaten anything for several days.

"Oh my!" Botan exclaimed. "You should get something to eat."

"Yes," he agreed, slowly rising to his feet.

He looked back in the direction he had arrived from, seeing a woodland area where he was likely to find something he could eat as well as the necessary herbs to make a decent healing balm for his wound.

"Will you be alright?" Botan asked him.

"Of course," he lied.

"If you need anything, come back and see me," she replied. "But only come back is it's you. I don't want to see that other Hiei, I don't like him."

"…Right…"

"He let me die. And he wasn't even sorry about it, he just pretended to be. Isn't that mean?"

"…Yes…"

Hiei started to walk off, no longer able to listen to what Botan was saying.

"Take care, Hiei!" she called after him. "I hope you find your way home soon!"

"Me too…" Hiei muttered to himself.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** SDF Botan has a few more things to say to Hiei that he finds surprisingly educational before he goes back to his own reality: but unfortunately he is still in no-man's land, and he learns – the hard way – where the area got it's name from during the war as he has a close encounter with a former ally. **Chapter 12 – Beyond the Cave**


	12. Beyond The Cave

**A/N:** **Minor smut warning (conversational only)**

 **Mild peril warning**

 **Start of major plot warning!**

 **Recap:** Hiei visited a reality where Botan was an SDF officer, and they spent the entire chapter talking… Hiei learned that Mukuro's Dividing Realities might send him to a reality where he was already dead (which would kill him) and he learned that even if he had apologised to Botan for letting the rock monster kill her, she would never have actually forgiven him (SO SHE PROBABLY WON'T IN HIS OWN REALITY…)

* * *

 **Chapter 12: Beyond The Cave**

Hiei never appreciated rude and sudden awakenings, least of all when they occurred during a sleep he needed to heal himself and when they were caused by some inanimate object making too much noise. He roughly grabbed the squealing item from his utility belt and crushed it in his fist, rather enjoying the way it whimpered into silence under the force of his grip. As he opened his fist out again and let the shattered remains of whatever the device was fall to the ground, Hiei started to remember that he was still in another reality, one that was neither his own nor the one he was trying to get back to. Instead, he was in a reality where there was still a war in demon world, he was the general of Mukuro's army and so a bigger part of it, Yusuke and Kurama were still his enemies, Yukina was miserable in the ice village, the Kakai Barrier was in place and Botan was a soldier of the spirit world Special Defence Force.

Out of pure curiosity – and nothing more, he convinced himself – Hiei spent a few seconds searching out Kuwabara. He of course did not care at all for the orange-haired buffoon, but he had to know if the idiot was as unchanged in this reality as he was in every other one Hiei had visited. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, Hiei found that Kuwabara was the same seemingly over-worked idiot with a stupid beard, shaved hair, a terrible suit and a generally dull aura about him. Hiei did not bother delving any deeper, but he assumed that since he was in a reality where the Kakai Barrier was up and Yukina was back in the ice village that he was also in a reality where Kuwabara's memories had been wiped by the Special Defence Force – possibly including Botan herself, which only made this reality all the more bizarre.

And a quick check of the wound on his chest told Hiei that he was going to be in this reality for some time yet – which was actually quite ironic. Mukuro had, after all, told him to only stay in any given reality if there was no war, and he had hurried his departure from two realities where demon world was at peace only to now be stuck in a reality where the war was raging on as steadily as it was in his own reality.

"Fuck," he sighed.

He knew that, in part, he was to blame for the mess that he was in. He had not bothered even looking for any medicinal herbs to try to speed the healing of his wound, instead using what coordination he had left to capture himself a meal and cook it before going to sleep by the remains of both his kill and the small fire he had built. He could tell by the amount of damage still plainly visible that he had not been asleep for long – if he had been, the wound would have closed over more – and also the light levels in the sky overhead told him he could only have been out for a few hours at the most.

He sat up fully, feeling slightly better as he realised that doing so no longer caused him as much pain as it had after that bastard Special Defence Force soldier had managed to get in a lucky shot at him. He looked about himself, and several thoughts occurred to him at once: he was still alone, and with no sign of anything or anyone nearby, he was quite deep into no man's land and it was not nearly as fearsome as the rumours made it out to be in his own reality and even though he was the general of an army at war, nobody seemed to care that he was missing.

Another device on Hiei's belt started making noise and so he quickly disposed of it too: he was starting to agree with Botan's assessment of the Hiei of this reality, because any idiot who carried around so many noisy contraptions was clearly someone to be despised.

Hiei stood up and stretched, an action he promptly regretted as he felt the drying parts of his wound tighten and tear slightly. He realised that he was going to be stuck in the present reality for some time if he did not do something drastic, and so he decided to return to Mukuro's fortress and physically eject a body from one of the healing chambers so that he could take it for himself. At least this time he would return to his own reality in a location he would be welcome in, he thought. Unless he chose a healing chamber that had someone in it in his own reality, then he would find himself squashed into an uncomfortably small space with someone else. Immersed in liquid. And without a breathing mask.

There was a lot to be said for thinking about where he was when he changed realities, Hiei thought to himself. And, based on Botan's warning about the possibility of him arriving in a reality where he was dead, he decided that he would never let Mukuro use her attack on him if he was anywhere near a burial ground, because presumably the location transfer worked in both directions.

Hiei paused. He had never given any serious consideration to the fact that travelling through realities did not send him across space before. He had considered it in so far as he had tried to not position himself in front of a wall after his second journey when he had been thrown through the wall, but he had never considered the importance of his location when he started his journey and why it was that way. Obviously he was arriving in the location the alternate version of himself was in at that time, which obviously meant that he could only visit a reality that corresponded to his location: if the Hiei from the paradise reality was in the living world when he was sent to another reality, he had no chance of reaching the one he sought, since he always started out in demon world. And obviously his position was important, because positioning himself near Mukuro's throne had taken him to the reality where he spent most of his time tied up there.

Hiei looked around himself again. The reality he was currently in was a pretty pathetic one, as it was barely different from his own, but at least it had been an educational visit for him, as he had learned quite a lot, both about Botan and about how he could cheat Mukuro's attack to get the results that he wanted. Now all he had to do was to figure out where paradise Hiei was most likely to be and make Mukuro use her attack on him from that location. Luckily he could remember that paradise Botan had told him he spent most of his time in demon world, so even though paradise Hiei did spend time in the living world, he was most likely to be in demon world, and since he probably only spent time training in demon world, there were only a few places within Mukuro's territory that he was ever likely to be.

"Hn," Hiei grunted, smirking confidently to himself.

Feeling quite smug and decidedly more confident in his plan to commandeer a healing chamber regardless of the potential consequences, Hiei removed his pesky tool-belt, dropping it on the remains of his fire – it was only slowing him down and getting in his way, he decided. He took one last look at his wound, seeing that it did at least look drier and less fresh and he certainly felt a lot better. He then lifted his head and got his bearings, but before he could start off he sensed something approaching him from behind, and it was moving quite fast.

"Wait!"

Hiei turned around, watching as Botan landed in a crouch at the other side of the remains of his fire.

"Wait," she said again, straightening up. "I have to ask you something before you go… But…"

She paused, studying his wound curiously before nodding slightly.

"I just had to be sure that you weren't my Hiei," she explained.

Hiei was starting to strangely like the way she said the words "my Hiei", even though, in this reality, she meant them as an insult.

"I just wondered, in your reality, what happened about this war?" she asked. "Because in this reality, it's been a terrible thing. The Kakai Barrier was put back up because of it. Yukina was made to go back to the ice village, and Yusuke and Kurama are barely recognisable any more… Have you visited other realities where there is or isn't a war in demon world? Do you know what the differences were? Do you know how to stop the war?"

Hiei did know how to stop the war: he just had to get back to the paradise reality, where it had never started: but even he realised that it was not the answer that this Botan would want to hear.

"There's a war in my reality too," he confessed.

"Oh no!" she gasped. "I should have known, of course. Mukuro worked so hard to develop the Dividing Realities to find a solution to the fighting… Are we separated by the war?"

"…Yes."

"Oh no!"

Hiei frowned slightly: Botan looked like she might start crying, which was absurd. Why did she care what was happening in his reality? It was not her own reality, so what business was it of hers? He thought about telling her as much, about telling her to suck it up and act like a proper soldier of the damned Special Defence Force, but again he could not bring himself to upset her further.

"I'm going to fix it," he said, opting for an answer that was both honest and avoided revealing too much of his true plans.

"Of course," she said, nodding her head. "I hope you get back to me soon – the other me, I mean, the one that loves you."

"…Don't you love me?" he asked.

"…No. You let me die."

"That was the other Hiei."

"But that other Hiei is the only Hiei I know."

"But I'm not him."

"Yes, but I'm also not your wife."

"Yes you are."

"…But I'm not."

"But you are."

"…No more than you are the same Hiei who let me die."

"…That doesn't make any sense."

Botan groaned and dropped her face into her hands. Apparently something was bothering her, though Hiei felt that he was the one with the most reason to be frustrated, since she was clearly just not listening to him.

"We're enemies in this reality," she eventually said, lifting her head again. "In every sense since the war began. I patrol the barrier and keep demons in demon world and you come up here and try to hypnotise me into helping you defeat Kurama's army."

"…You make me sound like a detestable bastard," Hiei replied.

"In this reality, you are a detestable bastard, Hiei," Botan frankly replied.

Hiei did not like hearing her use the word "bastard", least of all when she was using it as a name for him and prefixing it with the word "detestable".

"…But we used to be friends," he said carefully.

"I always thought of you as a friend," she agreed, giving him a small sense of déjà vu from the last reality he had visited.

"We were friends," he lied. "So… How about a nice friendly hug?"

Botan gave him a very sceptical look and he thought that she might slap him or else simple run away; but after a few seconds her face changed slightly as she appeared to consider his offer.

"I don't know, Hiei," she said.

"I've been taken away from the reality I belong in with you," he said. "And in every other reality I visit I either can't reach you or you hate me. It's very hard for me."

"Oh dear!"

Botan hopped over the ashes of Hiei's camp-fire and came to stand in front of him, her expression completely changed.

"Oh Hiei, that's so awful, I'm so sorry!"

She threw her arms around him and her body collided with his a little harder than he would have liked whilst he was still suffering an injury in his chest, but he held back his groan of pain and put his arms around her.

Hiei had just learnt something else from this reality: fancy words could be a useful weapon after all.

"I can help you with that wound," Botan offered, leaning back to hold him at arm's length. "I still have my healing powers, let me help close it over. Then you can go to the next reality, right?"

"Right," he agreed.

She moved her hands to his wound but Hiei quickly grabbed her wrists to halt her actions.

"Before you do that," he began, looking deeply into her eyes as he spoke, trying to look as earnest as he possibly could. "How about a nice friendly kiss?"

"A-a what?" she echoed.

Hiei silently wondered why she was always so surprised when he asked her to kiss him.

"Because we're friends," he added. "And because in the other reality, you're my wife."

"Yes but I don't think I could stand to look at you and kiss you," she replied. "When I look at your face, I can still see the Hiei who is very mean to me, the Hiei who let me die."

"Don't look at my face then," he suggested. "Just close your eyes."

"…But I would still know that it was your face, I don't think that I could look at–"

"You can't look at my face?"

"It's difficult for me because of–"

"It's difficult for you to look at my face?"

"Yes, because it–"

"But you had no problems staring at my penis earlier."

Botan gasped and one of her arms jerked: Hiei suspected that she had been intending to slap him across the face again, but he was still holding onto her wrists which stopped her from carrying out her intended action.

"That's completely different!" she snapped.

"I don't see how!" he snapped back, his patience starting to wane. "If you find it so difficult to look at my face when you're kissing it, just pretend that it's my penis, since you had no problems staring at that!"

Botan gasped again and again her arm jerked. Her face quickly turned red and she began tugging at her arms, trying to free herself from his hold.

"Let me go!" she wailed.

"No," he flatly replied. "You're only going to slap me."

She stopped her struggles, and for a brief instant Hiei thought that he had finally made her see sense. When he felt her armoured knee collide harshly with his crotch he realised how wrong he had been.

"You should have let me go when I asked," she said as he slowly doubled over in front of her. "Then I would only have slapped you."

Hiei growled at her but she did not so much as flinch.

"I don't expect you to understand," she said. "Not even the Hiei from this reality understands, but that day the rock monster caught me was the worst day of my existence. I was terrified. That thing had been chasing after you and I was trying to get to you to take you on my oar so that I could fly you to safety. I died trying to save you."

"What?" Hiei groaned.

He had always assumed that she had simply been fleeing the monster just as he had that day: though he had thought it was odd that a creature that could fly would let herself be caught by something earthbound.

"When it caught me, it was painful," she continued. "I was in my human body, and I was physically weak back then. I was terrified the whole time, and the last thing I wanted to do was to endanger you, but I knew that, unlike me, you were strong enough to overcome the monster. I just wanted you to make it stop. I didn't die instantly, you know. It was a long, slow, painful process. I was so scared… So scared… I screamed until I couldn't scream any more and then I just cried until I was dead… And you just smiled and ran off. You let it happen."

Hiei lowered his head so that he did not have to see the hurt look on Botan's face: it was the same look she had given him when he had burst into that tea room in spirit world in his own reality after returning from his first journey across realities.

"I know it wasn't you exactly," she added. "You were the tiny part of the Hiei I know who had the integrity to come back for me. But the Hiei I know was the part of you that just smiled and ran on, because that part of you did not even think that I was real. Do you know what you said to me in Lord Koenma's office afterwards? Of course you don't, because you saved me, you were never brought to Lord Koenma's office afterwards… You kept calling me "it". You called me "just an illusion used by spirit world to coax lost souls into the afterlife"."

"Fuck…" Hiei muttered.

"I know, it's terrible, isn't it?" Botan said, failing to understand the real reason he was cursing. "I thought I knew your heart. I never–"

"Thought that you could be so wrong about someone," Hiei finished for her.

"Exactly," she replied. "For me, it's impossible to believe that I would ever want to marry you. I can understand that I might one day be your friend again, but we were never close, and I can't really picture us ever being more than friends. You must have done something pretty amazing in that cave."

"I showed humility."

Hiei twitched as he saw Botan's eyebrows twist slightly as though she was less than convinced by his response: but she said no more on the matter, so he let it go.

"I'll heal that wound for you," she said. "And I hope that you can manage to get home soon."

Hiei nodded numbly, keeping his eyes down as she placed her hands over his wound.

"I probably won't be able to heal it completely, but I can certainly ease your pain," she added.

That was fine, Hiei thought. Once she had done all that she could, he could go back to Mukuro's fortress and sleep the rest of the wound off, getting some rest before he had to return to his own reality and then try again to return to the paradise reality.

"There you go," she said, leaning back from him. "Good luck with your… Journey."

Hiei nodded. Botan started to reach a hand out towards him as though she meant to touch his shoulder but her eyes fell to the ground and she turned from him.

"Goodbye," she said before taking off in a flash of light.

Hiei watched her go until she had disappeared from sight before looking down at his chest. His wound was almost completely healed, and he thought that it might even have finished healing by the time he ran back to Mukuro's fortress. He touched a finger to the centre of the faded cross-mark and found that was almost dry. He looked up again, turning himself towards his destination, and he started to run.

Hiei ran for several minutes through woodlands and out into a rocky landscape beyond, nearing the edges of no-man's land.

And there Hiei suddenly ran right into a rock at full speed, his nose and lower lip bursting open on impact and one kneecap cracking against the rock-face.

Hiei fell onto his backside with a curse, glaring up at the rock that had suddenly appeared in his path. It made no sense, but within seconds Hiei realised that he was no longer alone in no-man's land, and he quickly leapt up onto the rock, barely avoiding something long and thin that shot along low to the ground where he had been sat.

Hiei looked around but saw nothing. He looked down and saw that he was in his own clothes again and his wound had vanished completely. He was back in his own reality. In no-man's land.

Hiei could feel the presence of something immensely powerful all around him, something that had not been present in the other reality he had just come from: and the sight of the ground cracking around the rock he was stood on only confirmed what he had already suspected to be so.

"Kurama," he muttered.

Hiei leapt from the rock as a hideous demon plant sprouted from the ground and snapped down at where he had been stood. He could not tell how close Kurama actually was, but he could sense that the ground all around him was filled with the seeds of many different kinds of demon plants, and that was just as worrying as facing Kurama himself. Suddenly all the stories he had laughed off about the going's on in no-man's land came back to haunt him: apparently this was a place where people went missing, and now it was clear why.

He ran, leapt, punched and kicked to get himself away from the plants that kept shooting up out of the ground and trying to catch him. Without his sword he felt vulnerable, and he made a mental note to get himself a replacement for the one he had lost, and he even reverted to unhooking the empty scabbard from his belt and using it to help him bat away anything that got too close. He was not afraid of getting caught by a plant, but he did not like the idea of being trapped by one of Kurama's more cruel plants and possibly being found by Youko Kurama and consequently getting very slowly tortured to death.

Luckily he was close to the edge of no-man's land, almost back in Mukuro's territory, but he could not move in a straight line as he tried to avoid the plants, making his journey longer than it needed to be. It was slightly worrying that Kurama had taken a hold of the stretch of neutral land, as it circumnavigated more than a quarter of Mukuro's territory, meaning that, effectively, Kurama had blocked off any passage to and from Mukuro's land and the upper region of demon world. Whilst there was nothing of any real interest in the upper region of demon world, it was something Hiei hoped that Mukuro's intelligence squad had not overlooked, as no-man's land and the upper region that passed over Mukuro's land was lost to them as a safe place to make any necessary tactical retreats if the war spread into the heart of Mukuro's territory.

Hiei tripped slightly and was almost caught by a demon plant. When had he ever cared about military tactics? Had the Hiei from the dimension he had just left somehow had an influence on him? And why did he even care? This reality was not the one he intended to stay in, so it was a moot point anyway.

He reached a gorge and leapt across it, taking himself back onto the land he had been living on solidly since joining Mukuro. He stopped there and looked back across at the land he had left on the other side of the ravine, the demon plants rapidly disappearing back into the ground as though they were being sucked back in, the earth quickly filling in any cracks the emerging plants had created, until soon there was no visible sign that they had ever been there, and only the faintest hint of an immense demonic aura coming from an indefinable source in the distance.

Apparently Kurama was every bit as clever and deadly as he ever had been, Hiei mused, and perhaps Mukuro had been right: perhaps it was too late now, perhaps Kurama had become something that Hiei would no longer recognise, and too much time had passed for him to ever return to the friend he had once been.

But Hiei still missed Kurama.

* * *

Hiei had another meal when he arrived back at Mukuro's fortress and then slept in a niche in the roof cavity of one of the disused towers until she found him there and kicked him awake. His plan had been simply to be prepared before travelling to another reality, in case he found himself in a reality where it was difficult for him to find food, and also so that his body was rested and energised, and the only thing that would be keeping him down would be the wound he suffered from Mukuro's attack.

"You lied to me about this attack," he said as he followed her down the stairs.

"No I didn't," she replied without bothering to look back at him.

"You didn't tell me that I could be sent to a reality where I'm dead and that it would kill me," he pointed out.

Mukuro stopped walking and turned to face him as he joined her on the step she was on.

"How did you find out about that?" she asked.

"That's not important," he replied. "Why didn't you tell me about it?"

"Because it's not a problem any more," she said with a shrug. "It was a problem when I was developing the move, and I think it's how I lost the first twelve men and women I tested it on. It hasn't happened since, and I don't expect it to happen ever again. That was why I told you I've now perfected the move: it no longer sends you to a reality where you died. It can still send you to a reality where you are close to death, however, so you should be careful."

Hiei glared angrily at her but Mukuro returned his glower with a look of casual indifference before walking on down the steps. After a few seconds of debating over which bothered him more – her lie or his need to get back to paradise – Hiei hurried after her.

"Hit me here," he told her, positioning himself out onto a balcony halfway down the tower.

"Are you fully awake yet?" she sarcastically responded. "If I hit you here, I'll send you over the edge and you'll fall to your death."

Hiei looked back over his shoulder. It was quite a drop, but he had fallen from higher heights and survived, and this balcony was where he sometimes came to meditate, so there was a good chance the paradise Hiei might be there: he had not forgotten that location was important, and he intended to exploit that as much as he could. It was early evening and about the time he would sometimes go there for some alone time, so he felt quite confident that it was the best place to be sent away from.

"Just do it," he insisted. "I'll be fine."

"I don't think this is a good idea, Hiei," Mukuro replied. "But if you insist, then fine. But this time, if there is a war, come back straight away. I don't care what you have to do, just get back here. And if there isn't a war then you must find out why. No fucking about. Literally."

"Hn, very amusing. Now get on with it."

Mukuro nodded and began charging her attack. Hiei fully expected to be thrown off of the balcony, but it would be worth it if he landed in the reality he wanted to be in. He tensed, readying himself for the blast and the fall: neither of which would be any strain on his nicely rested body. Mukuro said something to him before she launched her attack but her voice was cut off partway through and Hiei was left to guess if she was wishing him luck, warning him to do only as she had asked or if she was telling him to get ready for the fall, as again he was cut open and sent flying back through the air.

Hiei was thrown back in a straight line at first before gravity began to pull him downwards and he accordingly righted himself midair and tensed for his landing.

And his body failed to respond.

Hiei suffered a brief moment of panic and almost fear as he realised that, for some inexplicable reason, his left leg was not obeying him at all, his right arm had gone limp at his side and his back had lost some of its flexibility. He hit the ground hard and crumpled into a pitiful heap, certain that he must have broken at least one bone on impact.

"Shit, Hiei!" he heard a voice call out. "Hiei! Are you okay?"

"No, I'm not fucking okay!" Hiei yelled back.

And again Hiei started to panic: there was something wrong with his voice.

"Hiei, there are better ways to die!"

Hiei glowered up at the cumbersome demon lumbering towards him. Clearly he was one of Mukuro's less bright soldiers, and from the aura he was emitting, he was not even powerful to compensate for his lack of intellect. Hiei sighed and tried to stand, but again his body failed him.

"I'll help you up!" the big demon offered, kneeling down at Hiei's side.

"Get away from me!" Hiei snapped.

His voice sounded very strange. And when he spoke, he could not feel his lips touching. In fact, Hiei thought darkly, he could not feel his lips touching when he was not talking and his jaws were shut. He brought a hand up to his mouth, gasped and twitching involuntarily when he felt the reason why: part of his top lip was missing.

"What the fuck is this?" he demanded, turning to the demon and pointing at his exposed top teeth.

"Um, that's your mouth, Hiei," the demon replied.

"Idiot!" Hiei growled.

He sighed, looking down at the hand he had just touched to his mouth. It was his left hand – because his right arm was still hanging limply at his side – and he could see that he was not wearing his wedding ring, which meant that he was, once again, in the wrong reality.

"Fuck," he cursed.

Hiei frowned, poking his fingers at his mouth again. He was missing most of his top lip and some teeth from one side of his mouth. And he had something leathery stuck to one part of his face. He tried to pull it loose, only to discover that it was attached.

Hiei slowly turned to the demon at his side, eying him over before finding what he sought: the demon was carrying a large, heavy sword at his side. Hiei grabbed the hilt of the weapon and drew it out, holding the side of the blade up in front of his face.

Apparently every reality he visited just got worse.

He was in a reality where he was quite extensively and quite hideously scarred.

"Fuck," he sighed, dropping the sword.

He had six more tries to get to the right reality: but Hiei was starting to lose hope.

"Are we at war?" he asked the demon at his side.

"Yes, of course we are!" the demon replied.

"Fuck," Hiei cursed.

He slouched over and opened his jagan eye, seeking out the others, feeling increasingly sick as he did so: Yukina was miserable in the ice village just as she was in his own reality, Kurama was hidden, Yusuke was obscured behind conflicting signals, Botan was in spirit world talking to Koenma about something – probably about becoming his wife, Hiei thought miserably – and Kuwabara was still that idiot in the suit with the annoying facial hair.

Damn Kuwabara, Hiei thought darkly: why was he so immune to all the changes?

Hiei dragged himself to his feet and started to walk, only to find that his disobedient left leg had apparently been severely broken and wrongly reset at some point previously, as his foot was pointed out at an angle and his knee did not fully bend, forcing him to limp along in an awkward gait. His right arm – his dominant arm – was so useless he almost wanted to just cut it off: but as he flexed out his left arm he could feel that he had apparently trained to overcome the loss of his dominant arm, which was at least a small consolation for his otherwise pitiful existence. He hobbled across the yard until he reached a shiny metal shield, stopping there to examine his full-length reflection.

He looked like something that had been born in the forest of the ugly.

He was unable to stand up straight so lacked the stance of a confident warrior, his left leg was visibly impaired even with his baggy pants hiding most of the damage and his right arm was a mangled mess. But the damage to his body was nothing when compared to the damage to his face. Most of his top lip and a small part of his bottom lip was missing, permanently exposing his top teeth even when he thought his mouth was closed. The left side of his nose looked as though it had been partially melted away, giving him one gaping nostril. His left eye was drooped slightly and his left eyebrow gone as most of the left side of his face was burned beyond recognition. He was mostly bald except for a chunk of black hair at the right side of his head, and his scalp was as melted as the side of his face: his left ear had been reduced to a mere hole in the side of his misshapen head. Hiei had never been vain, but he did not like the thought of living in an impaired body and with a face that made him look like one of the lowest classes of demons to be had.

And there was no possible way that Botan was going to find him attractive now, no matter how red his clothes were: obviously that was why she had not married him in this reality. She had obviously instead chosen to be with Koenma in that effeminately pretty adult form of his.

"What the hell happened to my face?" he demanded, turning around expectantly.

The demon who had tried to help him up had vanished, and Hiei did not know if that surprised him or not. With a sigh of annoyance he broke into a run, taking himself to Mukuro's office, cursing at anyone he passed, partly because he was so pissed off and partly because he was unable to run in a perfectly straight line, and he had to keep telling people to get out of his way. He burst into Mukuro's office without hesitation, where he found her poring over what looked like a child's game laid out on her desk. Hiei slammed his hands onto it and swept it aside, ignoring the enraged look his actions earned him from Mukuro herself.

"What the hell is this?" he yelled, pointing at his face.

"I was trying to consider the push Yusuke's army made over the eastern border of my land," she muttered sarcastically, waving a hand at the board and miniatures figurines Hiei had flung to the floor.

"What the hell happened to my face?" Hiei yelled, ignoring her response.

She sighed quietly and the anger visibly faded from her face.

"I can heal you," she said. "You don't have to live with those scars, and you know it."

"Damn right you're going to heal me!" he shouted back. "I can't live like this!"

Mukuro looked taken aback at his response, which only served to infuriate Hiei further.

"What did this to me?" he asked.

"…You did it to yourself, didn't you?" she replied, as though the answer was obvious and she pitied him for it.

"Why would I do this to myself?" he snapped. "What a stupid fucking thing to say! Tell me the truth, you bitch!"

Mukuro thumped a fist against her desk and stood from her chair.

"You did it to yourself!" she repeated. "You threw yourself at an ancient rock beast and got caught in the spray of its acid! What did you expect?"

"Why the fuck would I do something as stupid as that?" Hiei roared.

"I don't know!" Mukuro yelled back. "Maybe because you were trying to stop the rock beast from killing that ferry girl you're in love with!"

Hiei's anger evaporated in an instant.

"…Botan?" he asked softly.

"I believe that's her name, yes," Mukuro replied, sitting down again. "What is wrong with you today? Are you drunk?"

"I saved her from the rock beast?" Hiei asked.

"Yes," she answered. "Surprisingly altruistic and very unexpected of you, but you not only went on a mission for spirit world with Yusuke, Kurama, a human and a ferry girl but you almost got yourself killed trying to save the life of the ferry girl… Now seriously Hiei, why are you asking such stupid questions?"

"I saved her? I saved her from the rock beast? Did we go to the cave?"

Mukuro pulled a face at Hiei and he started to lose his temper.

"Did we go to the cave after I saved her?" he shouted.

"We found you in a cave, yes!" she shouted back. "The ferry girl managed to save you from dying, but she couldn't heal your wounds. Why are you asking about this?"

"How long were we in the cave?" Hiei asked, ignoring Mukuro's last question.

"About two weeks," she replied.

"So in this dimension I saved Botan from the rock beast and I was in the cave with her, and she's still not my wife? What the fuck is going on? She was supposed to marry me after the cave! No decision I could possibly have made could have changed that! You lied to me again about this stupid attack!"

Hiei punched his good hand at Mukuro's face, silently impressed at how much stronger his left hand was in this reality: but he was still not strong enough or fast enough to hit Mukuro, who caught his fist in the palm of her hand with frustrating ease.

"What are you talking about, Hiei?" she asked.

"I need to get back to my wife and you're not helping me!" he ranted back.

"…You don't have a wife, Hiei," Mukuro said.

"Yes I do! Botan's my wife!"

Mukuro released Hiei's fist and nodded slowly.

"Hiei, she said no," she said gently. "I know you seem to keep forgetting that, but the ferry girl turned you down – though why you would ask a ferry girl to marry you is still beyond me."

"That's not how it works!" Hiei cried. "If she said no in this reality, that was her decision, not mine!"

Mukuro sighed quietly.

"Do you need to go back again, Hiei?" she asked. "Do you need to hear her say it again?"

Hiei hesitated, unsure what his boss was asking of him.

"If you're in one of your pissy moods, or you're drunk, or you've just realised that you can't an erection any more, I'll take you back," she added. "But only if you promise not to completely humiliate yourself this time."

"…Take me back where?" Hiei asked, starting to grow suspicious of her.

"To spirit world to see the ferry girl again of course," Mukuro replied. "If you're in one of those moods where you have to confront her and hear her tell you no again, then fine, let's go."

"…You can take me to spirit world? Even though there's a war going on?"

Mukuro gave him a dark look that warned him that she was nearing the end of her patience, but Hiei did not really care. After all, he had far more reason to be mad at her for lying about her Dividing Realities – again – by telling him that it only sent him to realities that he had created with decisions that he had made himself. He started to wonder if she had also lied when she had told him that her attack would not send him to a reality where he was dead.

"Let's go," she said flatly. "Let's go to spirit world so that you can see that the ferry girl isn't interested in you. Obviously you're too drunk to remember what happened the last time we did this…"

"I'm not drunk!" Hiei snapped.

Mukuro walked around her desk and leaned over him, sniffing at him and curling her lip in disapproval.

"I bet you can't even walk in a straight line, you reek of alcohol," she sneered.

"I can't walk in a straight line because one of my legs is fucked!" Hiei sarcastically replied.

"And your slurring your words," she added.

"I'm slurring my words because I've lost my top lip, you shtupid bitch!"

"…Of course you are. How "shtupid" of me."

Hiei growled and lowered his head. He had not been drinking, but he had to admit that his shirt did smell like alcohol: apparently the Hiei of this reality had been drinking to the point that he could no longer aim the alcohol down his throat, which was probably why he had been trying to launch himself off of a balcony in a pitiful suicide attempt, Hiei decided.

"Just take me to my wife," he said.

"She's not your wife," Mukuro said, walking towards the door.

"Yes she is," Hiei grumbled, following after her.

"No she isn't," Mukuro replied. "And you have to stop asking her to be. The last time we visited her she told you she was going to become Koenma's wife. Or did you forget that too?"

"Fuck!"

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei meets the Botan of the reality he is in and what she tells him shocks him, as he discovers that the reality he is in is in fact of his own doing, yet it missed being the paradise reality by only the smallest lapse of judgement on his part. This revelation forces Hiei to rethink his opinions of Botan and the decisions he made in his own reality concerning her. And unfortunately for Hiei, when he returns to his own reality, he is in the absolute worse place he could possibly be. **Chapter 13 – Two Faces**


	13. Two Faces

**A/N:** **Hopefully by the end of this chapter the purpose of the realities Hiei is visiting will be a bit clearer, and they are all building to plot, I promise!**

 **Recap:** Hiei learned from SDF Botan that he had really upset and hurt her when he had let the rock monster kill her (took him long enough), he found out that Kurama has set demon plants all along "no-man's land", which borders a quarter of Mukuro's territory and fences them in slightly and he went to another reality where he was scarred and deformed from his fight with the rock monster, he had saved Botan and stayed in the cave with her, but she was not his wife.

* * *

 **Chapter 13: Two Faces**

The journey to spirit world was mercifully brief as far as Hiei was concerned, as he was mostly distracted from it by his own inward raging over the conflicting facts about the reality he found himself in. How was it possible that he had reached a reality where he had saved Botan from the rock monster and they had spent two weeks in the cave together and yet she was not his wife, Hitoshi was dead, demon world was at war, and everyone else was as they were in Hiei's own reality? This reality was only different from his own in that he was not banned from entering Yomi's and Yusuke's territories – though with a war ongoing, he was not likely to do either anyway – and he was badly scarred and deformed from his efforts saving Botan.

Botan had a lot of answering to do, Hiei thought as he limped along the hallway towards Koenma's office. He had saved her from the rock monster and shown humility in the cave, what more did she want from him? He had given so much and she had still chosen to be with that brat prince – there was no explaining this reality, because clearly it had resulted from a decision that Botan had made, not a decision that Hiei himself had made. And her refusing to marry him had started the war in demon world. Somehow.

"Hey, why did Hitoshi mess up?" Hiei asked Mukuro.

"Shit Hiei, not this again," Mukuro groaned. "He was only joking. He didn't realise you had just come back from asking the ferry girl to marry you – none of us did. He thought you had just gone to visit your friends in the living world. He was only joking when he called you a human sympathiser, you killing him and then killing countless others who may or may not have been close enough to see or hear what happened was just beyond stupid."

"Well he had no right to call me a human sympathiser," Hiei grumbled. "I never liked that idiot."

"And as I've told you before when we've been discussing Hitoshi, his job was far more difficult than it looked and he was exceptionally good at it. If you think you could do it so much better, you're welcome to try."

"Hn, you keep saying that, but you would never follow through. You would never let me talk on behalf of your fiefdom, so this is a completely redundant conversation."

"You're welcome to try me, Hiei, any time."

"Hn."

Hiei rolled his eyes. Mukuro had, even in his own reality, often tried to impress on him that her ambassador had been a very skilled diplomat, and she had often suggested that Hiei should replace him, and Hiei was always angry when she did. He had often thought about just accepting her offer and making her follow through: after all, how hard could it possibly be to just tell lies all day?

"Koenma," Mukuro said as she entered his office.

"Ah, Mukuro," he replied, smiling at her in greeting. "And Hiei!"

Hiei growled, though the sound was less intimidating as the expulsion of air through his clenched teeth was making a small whistling noise as it passed through the gap where he had a lost a few teeth. Koenma was in his toddler form, but that was not in the least reassuring to see, and his voice was all the more whiny and annoying for it.

"What brings you both here?" Koenma asked.

"Hiei needs to see the ferry girl again," Mukuro bluntly replied.

Koenma turned his head slightly, looking directly at Hiei, the awkwardness and apprehension obvious in his face.

"Well…" he began. "That's not really possible right now because Botan is busy. Do you mind if I ask why you need to see her, Hiei?"

"Yes," Hiei spat.

Koenma arched his eyebrows expectantly.

"Yes I do mind you asking," Hiei explained.

Koenma glanced at Mukuro who shook her head slightly.

"Okay…" he said, turning back to Hiei.

"Where is she?" Hiei asked him.

"She's busy, Hiei," he replied.

"That's not the question I asked," Hiei said, his voice lowering as his anger began to rise again. "I asked where she is."

"This isn't really a good time," Koenma said. "Though frankly, it's never a good time for two S class demons to appear in my office demanding to see one of my ferry girls. We're very busy here in spirit world, you know."

Hiei tried to give Koenma a withering look but doubted that it was successful as his face was less flexible and expressive being as scarred as it was. Surely though the little brat was mocking him: he was sitting with a bib on, a half-eaten tray of food in front of him, flecks of rice over his chubby cheeks and a blue ogre standing obediently at his side with a tray of desserts – how busy was that?

"Where is Botan?" he asked, talking slowly so that Koenma would be in no doubt that he was not taking his dismissal seriously.

"She is busy," Koenma replied. "But it was nice to see you both again."

Mukuro turned to Hiei as though she expected him to just accept this excuse, but he ignored her, instead utilising his jagan eye to search for Botan, who he was already sure was probably somewhere nearby. He was not leaving this reality until he understood exactly what had gone wrong – because in his own reality he had been feeling regret for the first time in his life for not rescuing Botan from the rock monster and for not apologising, and the last alternate reality he had visited had proved that apologising to her would have made no difference, and yet this reality seemed to be proving that rescuing her had made no difference either – and he had to know why that was. This reality ought to be the paradise reality, but it had failed somehow, and the only possible reason Hiei could think of to explain that failure was that Botan had been the one who had done something different and not him – which contradicted Mukuro's explanation of the rules of her Dividing Realities attack.

After a few seconds of searching Hiei located Botan and she was, as he had suspected, in spirit world, and apparently Koenma had been lying, because she was sitting alone in a room brushing her hair. Hiei turned and raced out of Koenma's office, running through the chaotic corridors of the temple, dodging past some of the spirits that he encountered and simply shoving others out of the way. He could feel that neither Mukuro nor Koenma were pursuing him, which was not as he had expected, but he was glad that he would not have to deal with them when he got to Botan, so he was simply thankful for their absence rather than curious about the oddity of it.

He shouldered his way through the door to the room Botan was sat in, and she almost fell over in shock. She was knelt on the floor but had fallen onto one hip upon Hiei's sudden entrance, and as she looked at him her face softened slightly and she got to her feet.

"Hiei," she said. "What are you doing here?"

She was still dressed like a ferry girl and looked as she did in Hiei's own reality, except that her hair was loose and fallen down around her shoulders. But, unlike in Hiei's own reality, she was able to look directly at him without a hint of fear or hatred in her eyes. In fact it seemed as though she was looking at him with pity and slight disappointment, which was arguably worse as far as Hiei was concerned.

"What am I doing here?" he asked. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

Her eyebrows shot up and she paled slightly, but otherwise she did not seem too flustered by his venomous response.

"This is spirit world," she said. "I live here."

"No you don't!" he snapped. "Or rather, you're not supposed to! Why are you still a ferry girl?"

"…I've always lived in spirit world and I've always been a ferry girl," she slowly answered. "Hiei, are you drunk again?"

She sniffed at the air experimentally and Hiei angrily tore off his alcohol-soaked shirt, flinging it out of the room. He started to correct her but lost his voice as he saw how terrible he looked without his shirt on: his scarring was quite extensive and – in some places – quite graphically hideous, and he was of course still bearing the fresher cross-mark wound from Mukuro's Dividing Realities. Hiei had never been vain or in the least concerned about what anyone else thought about his physical appearance, but suddenly he felt horrendously self-conscious and wanted to cover himself up, which in turn made him felt even angrier with Botan.

"I was wrong about you, woman!" he growled at her, deciding that he would make her feel at least as bad as he did. "You're a shallow bitch! You don't like the way I look!"

Botan's face fell and her bottom lip quivered slightly as though she might cry. She shook her head, momentarily struggling to answer him as her mouth moved wordlessly before she eventually found her voice again.

"Hiei, you know I feel terrible guilt for the wounds you suffered because of me," she said. "But I don't think any less of you for it."

"You're not attracted to me any more!" he snapped back.

"I never was attracted to you," she said.

"Yes you were!"

"No I wasn't."

"Yes you were!"

"No, really Hiei, I wasn't."

"Yes, really woman, you were!"

"…But I wasn't."

"What about the time I wore that red shirt and you thought I looked sexy?"

Botan gasped, covering her mouth with one hand, her face slowly reddening.

"Who told you that?" she asked.

"You did, you loud-mouthed idiot!" he replied.

"No I didn't!" she insisted. "I never told anyone! Well… Maybe I told Shizuru that night after a few beers…"

"You told me when we were…"

Hiei's words trailed off as his mind created a clear picture of the moment Botan had told him that she thought he looked sexy in his red shirt: and whilst Botan had also been a full ferry girl then, he had been a bound-up love slave of Mukuro, and the Botan he had been talking to had been a completely different Botan from a completely different reality.

Hiei sighed. This was getting tiring. Why could Botan never remember him and what she was supposed to remember when he visited her in another reality?

"Fine," he said tightly. "But that just proves my point: you did find me attractive before, but now that I look like this you can't even stand to look at me. You're shallow!"

Botan gave him a hurt and slightly surprised look, all the while maintaining eye contact with him in a way she was unable to do in his own reality. He started to feel that he should have chosen his words a little better, since she was still looking at him, but he was too angry about the circumstances of his life in this reality to bother correcting himself.

"And that just proves my point," she said, sighing softly. "You don't know me at all. I don't care what you look like, I just care about what's in your heart. Hiei you know I'm grateful that you saved my life, especially at such a great cost to yourself, but you have to understand that, although I will always be your friend, I don't love you. And that's mostly because I don't believe that you love me. You've given me reasons to love you, but you've never shown me that you love me. I like my life here in spirit world, and if I was to be with a demon like you, I would have to turn my back on everything I've ever known, and that's a really big risk. It's too big a risk to take on something I'm not sure about."

"Not sure?" Hiei grunted. "Hn, ridiculous! I almost died saving your life, and I showed humility in the cave, what more do you want from me?"

"I felt very close to you in that cave Hiei, but I don't believe that you could have changed your opinion of me so drastically in that time," she replied. "You had barely even spoken to me before then, and although I saw another side of you then, you've never expressed yourself any differently towards me."

"We have–"

Hiei abruptly stopped himself. He was not even sure why. He had been about to remind Botan that they had an extremely passionate relationship, but the thought had occurred to him that not only would she not understand that – since she was not the Botan who had married him – but saying that to her would probably only confuse and offend her.

That was quite strange. Hiei could never remember stopping to think about how his words might affect someone else's feelings before.

"You're a huge risk, Hiei," Botan said gently. "Because you are a demon of demon world and I am a ferry girl of spirit world, because you're unpredictable and violent, because you're cold and singular and because you value your personal space too highly. When you asked me to marry you, you were asking me to leave my job, my life, my world and my friends, to turn my back on Lord Koenma himself to be with someone who had never said anything nice to me, never shown me any affection and called me some quite terrible names when I was only trying to help him in a certain cave."

Hiei again bit back yelling out the first thing that came to his mind and instead paused to ponder Botan's words.

"I didn't say no because I hadn't ever thought about saying yes," she continued, her eyes watering slightly. "I said no because I wanted to know how you would react. If you had taken it graciously, if you have proved yourself to me and asked me a second time, I might have said yes. But you didn't, Hiei. You just blew up in my face, called me unrepeatable names – some of which I still don't actually know the meaning of – and you went back to demon world and went on a killing spree before sulking. I didn't see you for years and when I did see you again you were drunk and obnoxious and the way you behaved confirmed that I had done the right thing by refusing you."

"You're trying to say that this is my fault," Hiei said.

"It's nobody's fault," Botan replied. "It's just a misunderstanding."

Hiei ignored her reply, mainly because he had not been asking her a question, rather he had been thinking aloud. At first it had seemed like he was in a reality that had come about from a decision Botan had made – her decision not to marry him – but, after having heard her interpretation of the events, he could see that it was possible that he was in a reality created from one of his own decisions after all. Perhaps this reality had not become the paradise reality because he had not asked her to marry him a second time as she had wanted him to. Obviously that other Hiei in the paradise reality had lost all sense of pride, because he had not only thrown himself in harm's way for the sake of a mere ferry girl, he had also then allowed her to nurse his wounds, he had fallen in love with her, asked her to marry him, accepted her rejection and gone back to ask her a second time.

"Would you have said yes?" he asked.

"Wh-what do you mean?" she asked.

"If I'd asked you a second time, would you have said yes?"

"…You did ask me a second time, remember? When I first saw you again and you were drunk and obnoxious, and you made a crude remark about the shape of my b–"

"If I hadn't been drunk and obnoxious, would you have said yes?"

"…If you'd proved to me that you wouldn't be so cold and harsh towards me then yes I probably would have. You have a lot of good qualities that I've always admired, though they don't seem so obvious lately."

"If you did think about saying yes then you must have wanted to be with me."

"I wasn't sure. I was scared. It was a huge risk for me. If I had changed my mind or you had changed yours, there was no going back for me. I had to know that you would support me and love me and take care of me. You never showed me that Hiei."

"And I suppose that your precious little pri–"

Hiei stopped himself again. He had been about to mock Koenma and Botan's apparent feelings for him, but he sensed that doing so would only make her dislike him and make him seem weak, petty and dishonourable.

"You're a good man, Hiei," she said. "You've done a lot of good things for us and I admire your principles."

Hiei lowered his head slightly, a strange sense of déjà vu passing over him. Botan's last words felt familiar somehow, and he was certain that she had never said anything that charitable to him in his own reality: perhaps she had said them in the paradise reality.

"But you're too inconsistent," she continued, ending Hiei's sense of déjà vu and ending the slight sense of reassurance he had been feeling. "And you've never made me feel as though you could love and support me through what I would need to overcome to be with you. And I always felt that if I was ever given the chance to leave my life as a ferry girl that I would want to have a family – and I already know that that's not something you want. Which is quite responsible of you, you understand at least that you are not a good role model for a child, and that your inconsistency and your cruelty would make you a terrible father."

"I'm not a terrible father," Hiei blurted out before he could stop himself. "I'm not inconsistent and cruel, I would never abandon my children or throw them off a cliff like my mother and her kind did with me."

Botan faltered slightly.

"I thought you said that you didn't know how to treat children any better than you were treated by your mother, the ice maidens and the bandits who raised you," she said.

"I didn't," he replied. "I probably still don't, but I'm better than they are and I'm not so stupid to make the same mistakes that they did. My children are a part of me and I'm not giving up on them any more than I'm giving up on myself or on you."

Botan's bottom lip quivered again and her eyes watered over.

"H-Hiei?" she said weakly. "Are you… You don't even sound like yourself, I don't know what to say… I'm s-so…"

"What?" Hiei asked flatly. "Hn, it's that easy with you? I tell you what I'm really thinking and suddenly you change your mind?"

Botan pulled a face at him, a tear spilling from one eye.

"You've never told me what you really think or feel before," she pointed out. "But it's too little too late. I've already… Lord Koenma has asked me to… He's asked me to be with him, and I've said yes. I'm safe with him. I don't have to give up everything I know and love, and he's a gentle, kind and honourable man and I know that he will be loving and supportive towards me. Do you understand?"

"I already know that it's too late," Hiei replied. "That's why I'm trying to get back to place where it's not too late."

Botan frowned, a tear rolling from her other eye.

"I just have to heal this wound and try again," he muttered to himself.

"Oh, yes," she said, sniffing and pointing at the wound he bore from the Dividing Realities. "I can heal that for you."

Hiei eyed her over suspiciously, knowing that he ought to refuse her help, but unable to make himself say the words when he saw her looking so confused and sad. She was suffering, and he knew that it was, at least in part, because of him, and that was bothering him far more than he ever thought it could. When he did not protest, Botan crossed the room towards him and placed her hands over his wound. She watched her hands at first but shortly lifted her head, her eyes meeting his and she managed a sad smile.

"Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if you had been everything that I needed you to be," she said quietly. "But those thoughts will only ever be a dream, because in reality, neither of us can ever be what the other wants or needs."

"That's not true," Hiei replied. "I've seen a place where–"

Hiei stopped abruptly as Botan popped out of existence and he was suddenly standing alone in the room. He looked about himself curiously before looking down, seeing that his wound had healed and his body was once more unscarred and in the clothes he had been wearing in his own reality. He was back in his own reality, he concluded, but it felt even worse than before. Every reality he visited got harder to accept and every time he returned he saw more things broken apart beyond repair in his own reality.

He sighed and turned around to leave, moving towards the door. He was so consumed by his own gloom that he did not really notice the door opening ahead of him until it closed again and he suddenly found himself standing mere inches in front of Botan, who was apparently momentarily frozen in fear and shock. Hiei raked his eyes over her, his mind and body racing with a blend of conflicting thoughts and feelings as she continued to stand perfectly still, her body dripping wet and clad only in a towel that she had wrapped around her torso and a towel that she had wrapped around her head, containing her hair. It was only as his eyes met hers again and he saw the mounting terror accumulating there that he realised the full extent of his predicament: he was in spirit world, a place he was banned from in his own reality, in what was apparently Botan's bedroom, with Botan, who was practically naked, and she was seconds away from screaming for the spirit world Special Defence Force because she was the Botan who was afraid of him.

"This isn't what it looks like," he said quietly.

Botan opened her mouth and inhaled sharply but before she could scream out the air in her lungs Hiei quickly clamped a hand over her mouth. At the contact her eyes grew even larger and she tried to stumble back away from him, forcing him to grab her arm with his other hand to hold her in place.

"If you scream, you'll only make this harder than it needs to be," he warned her.

Her face changed but Hiei was beyond caring why. Arriving back in his own reality in the living world had been difficult, but arriving back in spirit world was far worse: not only would he never be able to explain himself to anyone but he really was stuck with no foreseeable way back to demon world without getting there via the Special Defence Force and Koenma.

"I need your help to get out of here," he said, giving Botan a stern look.

She was starting to cry and tremble in his grasp, which was really only making him feel worse. He wanted to tell her that she was wrong to hate and fear him so much but at the same time, he had given up caring what she thought of him because he was going to get back to the paradise reality, where she was not so flighty and stupid, where she already understood what her role was supposed to be and he did not have to keep explaining himself and tip-toeing around her feelings all of the time.

"I don't want to be here," Hiei told Botan. "I want to get back to demon world, and I know that's what you want to, so how about you just open up a breach in the Kakai Barrier for me and I'll leave."

She muttered something into his hand before making a small whimpering sound, her free hand clutching desperately at the towel around her body as it slackened and slid down a little. It briefly occurred to Hiei that her hold on the towel was tenuous at best, and that if he kept her in the position she was in for much longer, there was a good chance that the towel would slip right off of her, and she was presumably completely naked underneath it. The thought of Koenma catching him in Botan's bedroom with her naked brought an involuntary smirk to Hiei's face, which in turn made Botan whimper again, tears spilling from her eyes and running down over his hand that was still pressed against her mouth.

"I'm going to move my hand, but you have to promise me that you won't scream," Hiei said.

Botan did not so much as blink at his words, but he decided to trust her, and slowly pulled his hand back, uncovering her mouth. Her bottom lip was quivering quite pitifully, but she at least did not scream.

"Good," he said. "I'm glad you understand that you screaming won't help either of us."

"There's no point in me screaming," she whispered back. "Nobody will come if I do."

"Hn, you mean your precious Koenma and his useless Special Defence Force don't keep themselves permanently stationed within easy earshot of your private chambers?" he sneered, unable to keep himself from being sarcastic.

"Usually they do, yes," she quietly replied. "But obviously not today. Surely you can sense why. Is that the reason why you're here too? It's not enough to be fighting in demon world, you have to bring it here to spirit world too, is that it?"

Hiei's confidence started to diminish. Concentrating a little, he could sense that there was a dark presence in spirit world, but he could not quite define or place it. Whatever it was, it was clearly from demon world, which, in the current time of war and barriers, was quite unexpected.

"He may have changed quite drastically," Botan said, her voice still lowered. "But unlike you, he was a reliable friend to me. He was consistent."

"Yes, I know, I'm so inconsistent," Hiei groaned. "You already said that. I'm inconsistent, and I'm a risk."

"I never said that you were a risk," she replied. "Though maybe you took a huge risk yourself coming here today."

Hiei tilted his head slightly in confusion and for some reason Botan viewed his change in stance as an opening to attack him as she tried to catch him out with the same move she had in the reality where she had been a soldier of the Special Defence Force: this time however, Hiei quickly put down his hand, catching her knee in his palm as it neared his crotch. He gripped his fingers into her bare skin and she let out a small gasp, though he suspected by the look on her face that she was more concerned about the fact that her towel had parted over her raised leg, and as he was holding her knee up in the air, she could not adjust it back to hide any more of herself.

"Why do you keep coming back here?" she asked. "What do you want? You hate it here! You said you were glad that Lord Koenma banned you because it meant that you would never have to come back to this realm, so why are you here again?"

"It was an accident," he replied. "This time it was an accident."

"An accident?" Botan echoed. "Passing through the impenetrable Kakai Barrier several times in one week after years of never leaving demon world was an accident?"

"…Yes."

She whimpered again and tried to pull her leg free of his hold whilst tightening her hold on the towel. The towel around her head had also started to loosen and as she squirmed about in a vain attempt to get free of Hiei's hold, it eventually fell from her head, her damp hair falling down around her shoulders and unleashing a worryingly familiar scent: whatever was in her hair was the same thing she had been lathering up when Hiei had been in the bath with her in the paradise reality. It was a memory that he enjoyed reliving, but reliving it with the near-naked Botan of his own reality after inexplicably turning up in her bedroom was not ideal.

"Please don't hurt me," she said. "N-nobody would even hear if I did scream, but please don't hurt me."

"I'm not going to hurt you," Hiei spat back. "Although I ought to since you just tried to knee me in the groin!"

"I'm scared!"

Hiei sighed, that strange feeling of restraint passing over him again. He released Botan's arm and leg and turned his back on her, walking a few steps away from her.

"Go and put your clothes on, woman," he mumbled.

She made a series of small noises that might have been her attempt at speech before scurrying across the room behind a folding screen. Hiei turned towards it, barely able to make out her silhouette through the panes. He felt that he ought to turn away again, that he ought to concentrate on finding a way out of spirit world, that he ought to be civil to Botan as this Botan had suffered from the worst of his words and actions more than any other Botan from any other reality he had visited: but instead Hiei used his jagan eye to look through the screen and watch Botan discard her towel, baring herself completely.

Hiei smiled in spite of himself. She was still wet all over and trembling – and in his mounting state of arousal he conveniently forgot that she was trembling out of fear – her chest was heaving with every breath she took and her wet hair was clinging to her neck and the sides of her face in a way that was far too appealing. It took a great effort for Hiei to keep his feet rooted where they were, the urge to cross the room, slap aside the screen and grab hold of Botan proving to be quite overwhelming. The longer it took for him to get back to paradise the more he wanted her. He had barely had time to get accustomed to the idea that she was his wife and that he could have her any way he wanted and any time he wanted, but now he was stuck dealing with her hating him and fighting him off in every last damned reality he visited, especially the one he always ended up coming back to: his own. He knew that she was attracted to him because she had been so long before the rock monster incident, and he was sure that if she would just let him touch her she would soon realise her mistake in refusing him. After all, there was no possible way that naïve little toddler disguised in the body of an adult could even begin to make her feel the way Hiei knew he could.

One taste and she would be his.

Hiei looked down at himself, the sight of the inflated bulge in his pants sobering him slightly. Botan had almost concealed herself entirely beneath her kimono and she would presumably come out from behind the screen once she had, and Hiei doubted that she would appreciate seeing him that way, since she certainly had not seemed to in the reality where she had been one of King Enma's soldiers. Though she had been quite impressed, and he had enjoyed seeing that. Maybe it would not be so bad if she saw him like that, it might make her realise what she was missing.

"Do you promise that you won't hurt me?" she asked from behind the screen.

"Why would I hurt you?" he asked, rolling his eyes at her in despair.

"B-because you don't think I'm a real person with real feelings," she replied. "And I… Just the way you appeared in my bedroom with your clothes torn and that way you were looking at me… I thought you were going to rape me."

Hiei looked down at himself again, his face contorting in panic. He had to think of something repulsive and fast, but his mind was disobeying him by instead replaying some of the more erotic moments of his time in the paradise reality and the thought of re-enacting some of those moments in his own reality right then, right under Koenma's nose.

Out of sheer desperation, Hiei closed his eyes and focused his jagan eye on locating Kuwabara. After all, there was nothing more repulsive to him than Kuwabara. He shortly found the human standing in a small room of some sorts, facing a fat bald man sat behind a desk. The man was yelling at Kuwabara, calling him "useless" and "pathetic" and threatening him with all sorts of strange things, and Kuwabara was just standing there apologising instead of fighting back like the Kuwabara that Hiei had once known.

Hiei sighed, opening his eyes again. He looked down at himself and wondered if he needed therapy: the bulge in his pants was more prominent than ever.

"D-do you promise that you won't hurt me?" Botan asked him. "I'll help you get back to demon world if that's what you want, but you have to promise me that you won't throw me through a wall like you did to poor Rinbai and Shunjun."

"Who?" Hiei echoed.

"Rinbai and Shunjun, the two SDF officers who were escorting you out of the temple the last time you were here in that red sweater."

"Hn. No. I'm not going to put you through a wall. You have my word."

"Do you promise?"

"I said you have my word!"

Hiei turned away as Botan crept out from behind the screen, fully dressed in her pink kimono and wielding her metallic baseball bat as though she thought she might actually be able to fight him off with it. He spent a few seconds thinking about Yukina in the ice village, Kurama's traps in no-man's land and Kuwabara's beard, all of which promptly had the desired effect of calming him down enough that he could face Botan without the worry of her seeing him aroused – which, he thought, was probably the last thing that she needed to see if she genuinely was worried that he intended to rape her.

And it was also ironic, because in the paradise reality, she had raped him.

And thinking about that started to undo what Hiei had worked hard to do and so he quickly shook the thought from his mind.

"There's currently a small, unguarded opening in the Kakai Barrier. I'll take you there now," Botan told him. "But you have to promise to stay the length of my oar away from me the whole time and promise me that you won't turn up in spirit world again."

Hiei looked back over his shoulder, almost falling over as he saw that Botan had apparently intended her words quite literally, as she had summoned her oar and was holding it out towards him to measure the gap between them.

"I can't promise that I won't come back here," he said. "I don't want to come back here and I'm not trying to come back here. I'm trying to get somewhere very specific, but for some reason, I keep ending up back in this shit-hole."

"How dare you refer to my home like that?" Botan gasped.

Hiei sighed. He had been referring to the entire reality as a shit-hole, not just spirit world, but he could not be bothered explaining that to her.

"Let's just go," he groaned.

He started towards the door but stopped as he felt the business end of Botan's oar jab into the small of his back. He bared his teeth and glared back at her, finding her staring at him angrily.

"Let me go first, you idiot!" she said. "I need to check that there's no-one else around outside!"

Hiei held up his hands and back away from the door. He wanted to yell at Botan for being idiotic when she kept her oar held out towards him, circling around him at the length of it until she was at the door. He held back his urges however, finding it much easier than he thought he would, and allowed her to continue her charade of holding him literally at oar's length from her body. She crept outside and paused for a few seconds for moving on. Hiei could not see her for the door, but as the blade of her oar was moving away from him he followed it on the assumption that it was alright for him to do so, soon taking himself out into the hallway beyond Botan's room.

Together Hiei and Botan moved through the hallways of the temple in silence for some time, eventually coming to a small balcony, which Botan moved out onto. Hiei waited by the doors as her oar did not permit him to move beyond them, his face slowly morphing into one of sarcastic impatience when Botan snatched her oar to herself and leapt onto it, shooting up into the air. He walked out onto the balcony then, watching her fly up the steep, flat wall of the temple and over the roof out of sight.

Great, he thought, she had gone to report him to Koenma. He hopped up onto the railing of the balcony, glad to once more have full use of his limbs after the horrors of the last reality he had visited, and then he began attempting to climb the temple wall. The wall was flat and relatively featureless, making his task all the harder, but he persevered and soon reached the top, where, much to his surprise, he found Botan, an obvious portal to demon world and a slightly eccentric looking woman with bushy brown hair and dressed in long white robes.

"What's going on around here today?" the woman asked Botan. "I can tell there's something seriously wrong, but I can't get close to Lord Koenma for all the security around his office today!"

"It's nothing," Botan replied, clearly lying.

"But what about this?" the woman asked, holding her hands out towards the open portal above Botan's head. "That's a portal to demon world! And it's just been left here!"

"It's nothing," Botan said again, waving a hand at Hiei, beckoning him to join her.

Hiei started towards her, growling low in his throat as she once more held out her oar to keep him the agreed length from herself. His approach and her actions finally distracted the woman with Botan from the portal, and she instead turned her attention to Hiei, eying him over with some degree of interest.

"Is he a demon?" she asked, turning to Botan again.

"Yes, but he's going back to demon world now," Botan nervously replied.

"But I think he might be the problem," the woman whispered loudly. "The imbalance I can sense seems to be emanating from him."

"That's probably because he's a demon and he doesn't belong here," Botan said.

"I don't know if this is where he belongs or not, but there's a definite disruption in the tides of fate, and I think that he might be part of the problem."

"What?" Hiei echoed, suddenly interested in what the strange woman was talking about.

"You've been interfering with fate," she answered him sternly.

"That's not possible," Botan cut in. "The only unusual thing Hiei's done lately is pass through the Kakai Barrier."

"The tides of fates flow and ebb in a very specific fashion," the woman insisted, glaring at Hiei as she spoke. "Even the slightest artificial interference, no matter how well-meaning, can have serious repercussions!"

"The tides of fate?" Hiei repeated curiously.

"She's the guardian of fate," Botan explained. "Things are very tense here today, you showing up here hasn't helped."

"He didn't come here through this portal like the other one," the woman next to Botan told her. "I've been standing here since the other one arrived, and nobody else has passed me."

Botan started to look nervous and Hiei was impressed that she did not start complaining to her associate that he had come through the portal because he materialised mysteriously and without explanation in her bedroom.

"He could be a spy, sent by that other one," the woman continued. "He's definitely up to something untoward. We should report this to Lord Koenma."

"We can't talk to Lord Koenma today, he's too busy," Botan said firmly.

"Hn, too busy stuffing his face or too busy beating down grovelling ogres?" Hiei asked sarcastically.

"How dare you talk about Lord Koenma that way?" Botan snapped. "You don't even know what you're talking about! Lord Koenma is in a very important meeting – but you probably already know that! In fact, I know that's why you're here this time!"

"Important meeting…" Hiei grumbled under his breath.

He resisted the urge to suggest that the important meeting was probably with a platter of rich food or a child-sized toilet, instead closing his eyes and focusing his jagan eye on spying into the prince's office to find out exactly what had Botan so flustered. As she and her erratic friend had suggested, the office was filled with spirit world's strongest fighters, as every last one of the Special Defence Force was present, along with that blue ogre who was always at Koenma's side. Koenma was in his adult form, sat at his desk, and he, along with the ogre and the soldiers, was facing one person sat in a chair in front of his desk.

That one person was the source of the unclear demonic energy Hiei had sensed earlier, and although he still could not quite make out the energy pattern, it was obvious who he was looking at: long silver hair, golden eyes, a fanged smirk and a general physical appearance that was quite far removed from the way he had once looked, but identifiable by the markings on his body.

"Yusuke Urameshi…" he muttered, closing his third eye and opening his own eyes.

Hiei turned to Botan expectantly, but she merely backed up and pointed at the portal, keeping her eyes on the ground as she did so. Hiei slowly moved towards the opening, watching Botan as he went, but she refused to look up, and so he passed through the portal and returned to demon world.

But as his feet hit the ground again, Hiei could not help but wonder and worry about exactly why Yusuke had called a meeting with Koenma. And he was still a little taken aback from seeing that the rumours he had heard were true: Yusuke did look remarkably like Raizen now, to the point that his friends back in the living world would probably no longer recognise him.

It was, in Hiei's opinion, just another sign of how bad things were in his own reality, how far beyond salvation they were and how there was no chance of his own reality ever being remotely as good as the paradise reality was: which was why he had to get back to paradise, no matter what the cost.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei is sent to yet another reality and it's still not paradise. In fact, it's not much different from his own reality at all, despite the fact that he had made a quite significant difference in his own life there. However, although it is not massively different, it does offer Hiei something he does not have in his own reality and so he takes the fullest advantage of it by investigating Kuwabara's continuing immunity to the reality shifts. **Chapter 14 – Diplomatic Immunity**


	14. Diplomatic Immunity

**Recap:** Hiei visited a reality where, despite having saved Botan and spent those two weeks in that cave with her (and still having the scars to prove it), she was not his wife – in fact, she was in the process of becoming Koenma's partner just as she was in Hiei's own reality. Botan told him that she had refused his offer of marriage because she was too scared to turn her back on spirit world and take a chance on him, but she might have accepted if he had gone back and asked her again and proved his devotion to her. Hiei returned to his own reality and learned that Yusuke was in spirit world meeting with Koenma.

* * *

 **Chapter 14: Diplomatic Immunity**

"There was a war, you need to try again," Hiei said. "But before you do, I need to know something."

Mukuro nodded and so Hiei continued.

"Did you tell Koenma what we're doing?" he asked. "Does he know that you're sending me to alternate dimensions, and if so why did you tell him?"

"Yes," she plainly replied. "I had to explain why you had appeared in the living world that first time without going through the Kakai Barrier."

"Why did you tell him?" Hiei hissed. "It's not his business! He's always interfering in demon world affairs that are not his concern!"

"An S class demon finding a way through the impervious Kakai Barrier is his business Hiei. If I had let him think that you knew a way through there would have been widespread panic in spirit world. It's called diplomacy, Hiei."

"I thought diplomacy was all about talking bullshit to avoid letting your enemies know what's really going on."

"Maybe it is. I wouldn't know. I'm not a diplomat, that's why I employ someone else to perform that function for me."

"Hn, ridiculous."

"I had to tell Koenma the truth Hiei, the guardian of fate could tell that I'd been fucking around with fate and she had alerted him to the problem. We don't need to be at war with spirit world, so I told him the truth the day I came to collect you after your first visit to another reality. Why do you think Koenma keeps releasing you and why do you think he is keeping his soldiers posted in the living world? They know you might end up back there, they're waiting for you so that they can get you back here."

"That's not true! Koenma said that he didn't know how I was able to get to the living world!"

"He knows, Hiei. He also knows that if you are in the living world, it's because you've been to a reality where there was no Kakai Barrier, and so you ought to have been gathering information on how to stop the war in demon world… You know, something useful and helpful, rather than just lusting after a moderately attractive, unintelligent, skittish ferry girl…"

"Fuck you."

Mukuro's face changed and she slowly rose from her chair.

"What did you just say?" she asked in a low voice.

"I said shut-up and get on with it," Hiei replied.

Mukuro narrowed her eyes at him but he said no more. He was not about to repeat himself: they both knew that she had heard him perfectly well the first time around.

"Fine," she said tightly. "Four failed attempts down, six more to go. Do you feel confident Hiei?"

"Let's do this somewhere else," Hiei replied, turning and walking out of her office.

She did not immediately follow him but he did not care. He was not taking any more chances or guesses: he was going back to exactly the same place he had been the first time she had used her attack on him to be sure that he went to the reality he wanted to be in. He did not want to land up in any more messed up half-attempts at paradise or – even worse – back in one of the other second-rate realities he had already visited.

Hiei was sure that he would kill Mukuro if she sent him to a reality that he had already been to but could not send him back to the paradise reality. If he never reached a reality he had already visited again he would excuse her on the basis that perhaps she was unable to send him somewhere he had already been to: but if she sent him back to one of those other fucked up realities but not to paradise he would be furious beyond all reason and consolation.

Hiei took himself down to the basement of Mukuro's fortress, walking around there a little until he found what he thought was about the spot he had been standing on when he had been sent to paradise. He stopped there and looked up, finding Mukuro standing some distance from him, her arms folded and her face set squarely into a look that made him feel like a disobedient child again. He hated it when she treated him like that: especially now that he was a father himself and perfectly capable of acting with maturity and sensibility.

"Are we ready?" she asked.

She was even using her baby-talk voice on him. Hiei wondered if the paradise Mukuro had ever met Monzan and if she spoke to him like that too. Poor kid, Hiei thought.

"Yes," he replied.

"Good," she said, charging her attack. "As this is attempt number five, making us halfway through this experiment, let's hope that you can find out something useful from this trip… Because so far, you haven't learned a damned thing."

That was not entirely true, Hiei thought to himself. He had, in fact, learned a great deal: just not on the subject Mukuro was sending him away to learn about. He was actually beyond caring about the war. Politics had always bored him, and if Yusuke was talking to Koenma and Kurama had taken hold of no-man's land, things were clearly looking bad for Mukuro and her people. If Kurama's demon plants did not eventually enclose them completely and kill them all off, spirit world would probably do something in a coalition with Yusuke, who was apparently still allied with Koenma.

It was all too complicated and too false. Hiei liked direct actions that lacked ambiguity, and politics was all about talking and being vague. But none of that mattered anyway, he decided, because he was on his way back to paradise, where there was no war, no confusion of alliances, and Koenma stayed well out of everyone else's business because he was sulking over Botan choosing to marry Hiei.

Mukuro readied herself to launch her attack and Hiei closed his eyes, holding his arms out at his sides, welcoming it and the promise of something better that it potentially offered him. As always, he was thrown backwards from the attack, this time simply flying a short distance before hitting the ground and skidding slightly before coming to a rest. He opened his eyes again and what he saw made him smile.

"What the hell just happened?" a voice asked.

Hiei ignored it, getting to his feet, his smile widening. He was no longer alone in the basement instead there were several other powerful demons, most of whom were deployed for fighting in the war in Hiei's own reality. Their presence there was clearly a sign that the war was not present in this reality, and that was an excellent start. Hiei started to walk towards the exit, the feeling of every set of eyes watching him starting to eat away at his mood as he passed.

"What are you all staring at?" he snapped, stopping abruptly and scanning around the others in the room. "Get back to whatever you were doing before!"

Hiei earned himself a few sceptical looks before the others gradually returned to sparring with each other, which was apparently what they had been doing when he had arrived. Hiei did not bother waiting to find out if the Hiei of this reality had been sparring with anyone, instead moving swiftly out of the basement to the floor above. There he continued onwards out to the front yard, the sight outside instantly dousing the flame of hope that had been burning within him as rapidly and unpleasantly as though someone had thrown a bucket of water over him.

The border patrol road was overgrown, part of the perimeter wall of the yard was damaged, and the flashes of conflict of the ongoing war were alarmingly closer to Mukuro's headquarters in this reality than they had been in Hiei's own dimension.

"Fuck," he sighed.

He looked down at his left hand – realising that he probably should have done so much sooner – and of course saw that he was not wearing a wedding ring. He touched a hand to his chest and felt two hiruiseki hanging there, his next idea being that he would start searching out the others with his jagan eye: but the feeling of his unusual garments beneath his hand halted his actions.

Hiei looked down at himself for several seconds before accepting what he was seeing.

Hiei turned around on the spot until he caught the eye of a guard by the fortress door.

"What the hell am I wearing?" he asked the guard.

"…Your uniform, Sir?" the guard offered.

"This isn't a uniform," Hiei pointed out. "I don't wear clothes like these, this is almost as bad as the human clothes I was wearing in that messed up reality! What the hell is this?"

"…That's your uniform, Sir," the guard said again.

Hiei looked down at himself again. He was dressed like one of those physically weak demons that he despised so much: the ones that were actually intelligent, but sorely lacking in physical presence and so dressed in fancy clothing and got themselves administrative jobs, aligning themselves with demons of real power and influence. Pitiful, miserable, weak cretins every one of them, Hiei thought bitterly, and no decision he could ever have possibly made in his long, long life could have led to him becoming one of them.

"This isn't a warrior's uniform," he said in a low voice.

"No Sir, it's the ambassador's uniform," the guard replied.

"Exactly!" Hiei snapped. "That's exactly what this looks like! I'm dressed like that idiot Hitoshi! Why would I be dressed like this?"

"…Because you're the chief officer of diplomatic affairs?"

"I'm not the chief officer of… Oh fuck!"

Hiei did not need to hear any more: it was plainly obvious where he was and why. This was the reality that had come about from his accepting Mukuro's sarcastic challenges that he take over from Hitoshi after he had killed him. He was surprised that he had actually gone as far as to accept the position and to continue with it in any reality, but he had always thought about trying it, if only to piss Mukuro off as much as she pissed him off every time she suggested he do it, so it was not completely shocking to him that such a reality existed: after all, he had already visited a reality where he had chosen to live as a human and a reality where he had willingly become Mukuro's dominated love slave, so a reality where he was Mukuro's ambassador was not really that unreasonable.

"This is a stupid fucking reality!" he complained, not caring about the confused and curious way the guard looked at him for his strange outburst. "I can't even get any benefit from being here! How is being the chief officer of bullshit any better than what I've come from? The war is closer, I don't even need to look to know that Yukina must be back in the ice village and the Kakai Barrier must be up, Kurama and Yusuke are still sell-outs, Botan's probably married to Koenma and I'm stuck here pretending that I give a flying fuck about politics!"

Hiei growled and ground his teeth. He then found himself doing something completely irrational, but he was almost glad that he did as it confirmed that he truly was no better off in the reality he was in: he sought out Kuwabara and found him sitting alone in a dark office, hunched over a desk despite the late hour, drinking something black and pretending that he was lucid despite clearly being seconds away from passing out from exhaustion.

"Idiot with his stupid fucking immunity!" Hiei grumbled, closing his jagan eye and shutting out the image of the idiotic human.

"Oh Sir, speaking of immunity, I got a message from spirit world for you about ten minutes ago."

Hiei turned sharply, glaring at the guard accusingly.

"Koenma said he just had a meeting with Yusuke Urameshi," the guard continued.

Hiei frowned slightly, a vague sense of confusion clouding his thoughts: Yusuke had been meeting with Koenma in his own reality at that time too, was it more than a coincidence, or had they been meeting for the same reasons and at the same time in both realities?

"He's asked if you'll meet with him on behalf of Lady Mukuro's kingdom," the guard said. "I think spirit world might be trying to initiate peace negotiations, Sir."

"Hn, I don't care about that," Hiei spat. "What happens in demon world is not Koenma's concern. And besides, I'm banned from spirit world and Koenma can't stand to… Wait, I'm the ambassador now…"

"He said he'd like to see you as soon as you can make it there," the guard added. "I think he means tonight if you can, Sir."

"…Koenma invited me to spirit world?"

"Yes Sir."

Hiei looked out towards the conflict in the middle distance, he looked over at the obvious battle-induced damage to the perimeter wall and then finally he looked down at his ridiculously pompous clothing.

"How do I get through the Kakai Barrier?" he asked, turning to the guard.

"The spirit world Special Defence Force soldiers have opened a breach in the upper region, Sir," the guard replied. "They're waiting there for you now."

Hiei did not need to hear any more. He had a plan, but it did not so much involve spirit world. If he was the ambassador in the reality he was in then nothing else that may or may not have come before it mattered: as an ambassador, he had all the same privileges that Hitoshi had once had, including free passage between all three territories of demon world, free passage between all three worlds – demon, spirit and human – and, best of all, he had diplomatic immunity wherever he went.

* * *

As he was escorted to Koenma's office by two oddly obliging Special Defence Force soldiers Hiei started to consider the irony of his circumstances: he was in a reality where there was a war in demon world and he was defying Mukuro's orders by remaining there, but also he was obeying her orders by going to extreme lengths to find out more about the conflict by getting involved as her ambassador. Being an ambassador was of course an easy job, he thought with a smirk as they walked by ogres and ferry girls who all bowed politely to him, something that obviously pained them to do judging by the tension in their features as they looked upon him. Not that Hiei really cared what the spirits of spirit world thought of him, in this reality or in any other: he would eventually get back to the paradise reality, after all, and there not even Botan cared about spirit world and its inhabitants.

Hiei was not especially interested in what Koenma had to say either. He supposed that, back in his own reality, the message had reached Mukuro, and she was either visiting Koenma herself or she was sending someone else as incompetent as the fool who had started the war with his misspoken words. Or maybe she was waiting for morning, since it was getting quite late at night. Hiei was not one for waiting for anything, so of course he had gone straight to the breach in the Kakai Barrier as soon as the guard at Mukuro's fortress had told him about it. No-man's land had been devoid of Kurama's demon plants, which had been an added bonus – Hiei thought that Kurama's demon plants were probably only present in his own reality, the dystopian shit-hole that it truly was – and so Hiei had reached spirit world in record time.

"Hiei, good evening," Koenma greeted him as he entered his office.

Koenma was in his adult form, and, despite the fact that the ogres and even the Special Defence Force soldiers around him looked ragged, harried and exhausted, the prince looked almost hypnotically tranquil, refreshed and pretty. Pretty like a girl, Hiei thought darkly.

"I'll come straight to the point," he continued, waving a hand at the chair Hiei had seen Yusuke sitting on in his own reality. "Yusuke Urameshi called a meeting with me earlier today."

Hiei sat down onto the chair silently, keeping his expression impassive as he sensed that Koenma was pausing to gauge his reaction to his last remark.

"And he's asked me for something slightly controversial," Koenma eventually continued. "It's been three years since we put the Kakai Barrier back up, and since then only three demons have ever been allowed passage to the living world or spirit world. Yusuke is asking us to remove the barrier, because he wants to be able to visit the living world, and he suggested that Kurama would want the same privilege. Yusuke's ambassador – who obviously is one of three currently allowed passage – has also agreed that the barrier should come down. However, I don't think that it's a good idea. I called you here first because Yusuke never mentioned you, and I wanted to gauge your feelings on this before I called in Yomi's ambassador. As a demon who does have free passage and also as someone who obviously had objections to the "ethnic cleansing" that had to take place in the living world prior to the barrier's erection, how would you feel about the removal of the barrier?"

"I see," Hiei said, trying to sound as though he actually cared about what they were talking about. "Would you return Yukina to the living world if the barrier came down?"

"I'm not in the business of relocating demons to the living world, Hiei," Koenma flatly replied. "Yukina would of course be free to return there herself after the barrier came down. However, so would every other demon in demon world, and without the border patrol in effect to police the portals between demon world and the other realms, it could be chaos. Refugees from the fighting and over-zealous troop leaders alike could end up passing into spirit world or the living world and hurting countless innocent spirits and humans."

"Yes, that is a concern," Hiei said, sitting back in his chair and pretending to look pensive.

Koenma's face changed almost imperceptibly.

"You're taking this very calmly, Hiei," he said.

"That's my job, Koenma," Hiei replied, hoping that the sarcasm was only slight in his tone. "I am the chief officer of diplomatic affairs for Mukuro's fiefdom, after all."

"…Yes, but you've never taken the post seriously before…" Koenma slowly replied. "I always assumed that you were just doing this to prove some sort of point and that you would tire of it eventually."

"Are you underestimating me?" Hiei asked, his face darkening over, as he genuinely did become a little angered at the thought.

"Not at all," Koenma immediately replied. "Though it is difficult to take you seriously as a political officer when you turn up to a meeting such as this in blood-stained clothing. Dare I ask: is that your own blood, or someone else's?"

Hiei glanced downwards at the prominent red stain over his abdomen. He was swathed in so many unnecessary layers of clothing that he had forgotten about the wound he bore from Mukuro's Dividing Realities.

"The message I received informed me that this was an emergency meeting," Hiei smoothly replied, meeting Koenma's eyes again. "As a political officer, I was keen to maintain a good relationship with yourself and spirit world, so I came here immediately upon receipt of the message."

Koenma's eyebrows lowered and Hiei sensed that he had perhaps layered his sarcasm on a little too thickly this time: but there was little Koenma could say back to him without appearing to start an argument, so he still had the upper hand.

"I'm going to need to think about the matter of removing the Kakai Barrier," he continued. "I think I'll need to go to the living world for a while and just… Reassess the situation."

"That's fine," Koenma agreed, looking and sounding anything but fine with Hiei's suggestion. "I just ask that you think quickly, as I'm keen to expedite this matter. I'm sure you can understand why."

Hiei had no idea why Koenma was keen to end the debate over the barrier's presence in a hurry, other than perhaps he was hoping that by placing a deadline on the matter Hiei and Kurama were more likely to agree that it should remain in place.

"Of course," Hiei lied.

"And, in light of the current political situation, I'm going to send one of my ferry girls with you," Koenma added. "You understand of course that she's only there as a guide, as she poses no threat to you. My ferry girls are not fighters."

"…You'd be surprised…" Hiei grunted, the memory of Special Defence Force Botan still far too fresh in his mind.

"Well anyway, if you want to proceed to the portal, I'll arrange for Ayame to meet you there," Koenma said.

"Ayame? What the fuck is Ayame?" Hiei echoed before he could stop himself. "Give me Botan."

"You hate Botan. You let her die and you did not even feel any remorse. And besides, I couldn't give you Botan even if I did think that it was a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Because she's no longer in my service."

Hiei sat forwards abruptly.

"She's become a human," Koenma added. "Not that I expect you to care, but since you asked… She's currently still here in spirit world, but this is her last night as a ferry girl, she leaves for the living world tomorrow morning to live as a human."

"For the ten–"

Hiei cut himself off, trying to remember his negotiation training and to choose his next words as carefully as he could.

But then he remembered that he had never actually received any negotiation training, and that his idea of negotiating had always involved swinging his sword at someone and seeing if they survived before bothering to let them talk.

"Why did Botan become a human?" he asked.

"That's not your concern," Koenma answered.

"…But she's still here tonight?"

"She's just gone to bed, actually."

"Well wake her up. If you think that I need a babysitter while I'm in the living world, you'd better make sure that you give me a capable one."

"Ayame is the most capable ferry girl in my employ."

"I want Botan."

"I don't really see that this is a matter for discussion."

"Neither do I. If you're going to send a spy after me, you should at least have the courtesy to send one that I find agreeable."

"But you…"

Koenma clenched his fists tightly, his knuckles whitening almost painfully and his jaw visibly tensed. Hiei smirked at his discomfort because he knew that it was a sign that the prince realised that he had been defeated. Hiei had never beaten anyone in a negotiation before: he felt smug and strong for the experience. He supposed that was how Hitoshi had always felt, especially after he had so famously stopped the demon world war in the paradise reality. That was probably why he was always such a smug bastard.

Interesting, Hiei thought to himself. Perhaps Hitoshi was not such a worthless piece of shit after all.

"Botan is supposed to be resting," Koenma eventually said, his aggravation obvious in his tone and barely restrained as his shoulders squared. "She has a very busy day ahead of her. But, for the sake of keeping the peace, I will wake her and send her to meet you at the breach. Is there anything else excessively unnecessary that you would like me to arrange for you while I'm at it?"

"That'll be all," Hiei replied, letting his smirk widen slightly.

"Then get up to the breach and wait there for Botan."

Hiei nodded and got to his feet, walking slowly from Koenma's office. He was in no hurry, mainly because he recognised that this reality seemed to be alarmingly in sync with his own reality, and in his own reality Botan had been bathing and apparently on her way to her bed when he had encountered her, and so by now she was probably fast asleep, and so it would take some time for her to wake up, dress herself and make her way up to the breach, giving him plenty of time to kill.

Hiei had two plans, two experiments he wanted to try out before he returned to Mukuro in his own reality to try to reach paradise again. The first was that he wanted to confront this Botan, who was basically the Botan of his own reality, with all the same negative feelings towards him and so he had to test something out on her and the second was that he wanted to confront the Kuwabara of this reality and the Kuwabara of his own reality – he figured that, since he was once more in a position to reach the living world, he might as well take full advantage of it by returning to his own reality there.

Hiei had a theory about why Kuwabara was unaffected across the realities he had visited, and he had to test it out.

At the breach Hiei found himself alone with the two Special Defence Force officers who had been trailing him since his arrival in spirit world. One of them was only vaguely recognisable to him, but the other was their leader. Hiei eyed him over slowly, the temptation to seek revenge for the wound-widening punch the soldier had given him in another reality creeping up inside of him. He was almost too glad when Botan eventually joined them and the officers stepped back out of arm's reach.

"H-Hiei," she said, bowing to him slightly awkwardly.

She had tied her hair up in a ponytail but it was a little squint and ragged and her eyes still looked heavy with sleepiness. Her obi was a little too slack and she was definitely slouching, making her look as though she had literally just woken up since arriving by the breach. It was, Hiei supposed, how Botan looked first thing in the morning upon wakening. It was, he supposed, how she had looked the morning she had woken up in bed in the paradise reality with that other Hiei after he had been sent back to his own reality. It was, he supposed, how she would have looked when he first took her in his arms that morning if he had not been so abruptly sent back to the pathetic excuse for a life that was his own reality.

Hiei ended his train of thought, because he sensed that it would only lead him to the point of what he had intended to do to Botan that morning, and he did not want to once more be too confused by his own arousal to focus on what he was actually meant to be doing.

"Are you ready to go?" she asked him.

He nodded and jumped through the breach. He stopped on the other side and inhaled deeply, still surprised that the freshness of the living world air appealed to him as much as it did. He then turned to Botan, who had drifted through behind him. She was rubbing at one eye, and she looked quite pitiful – and worryingly also quite cute.

"I have to find Kuwabara," he said to her, hoping that remembering the human might stop him from losing control of himself.

"Kuwabara?" Botan repeated. "What do you want with Kuwabara?"

"Well…"

Hiei had no reasonable excuse prepared to answer her with, and he was far too distracted to concentrate on thinking one up. He wondered if he could jump high enough from where he stood to catch Botan as she hovered above him. He wondered how easily that loose obi would come free in his hands.

"Oh, I understand," she said. "You're worried because Kuwabara tried to break the Kakai Barrier once before to get Yukina back. You don't have to worry about that now. Captain Ootake erased Kuwabara's memories of Yukina, and demon world, and Yusuke, and spirit world and everything to do with them."

"…Captain who?" Hiei echoed.

"Captain Ootake!" Botan replied, slightly impatiently. "The captain of the SDF?"

"…Is that the idiot with the moustache?"

"…He's not an idiot, Hiei."

"I don't care for him. I won't make the effort to remember his name."

Botan quirked an eyebrow but said nothing.

"I still need to find Kuwabara," Hiei told her. "And then I need your help with something."

"My help?" she asked. "Even though I'm not even a real thing?"

"…What?"

"You need my help? Even though I'm just an illusion used by spirit world to coax lost souls–"

"Oh for fuck's sake Botan, we're past that!"

Botan arched her eyebrows.

"Maybe you're past it, but I'm not," she said flatly. "You really hurt my feelings that day – and I do have feelings, despite what you think of me."

"I don't…" Hiei began, fighting to find the words. "It doesn't matter anyway, does it? You're becoming human tomorrow, and I know why."

Hiei's face twisted despite his attempts to remain stoic: if the Botan of this reality was starting her human trial the next morning then that probably meant the Botan of his own reality would be too. And that meant that she was truly was lost to him in his own reality. If he ever wanted to touch her again, he had to get back to the paradise reality – which he had been trying to do, but now he could see that it was not only his desired option but it was also his only option for happiness.

"It's just a trial," he continued. "You have to live in the human world as a human for ten years before they will let you become a spirit with a physical presence, which you have to do to become Koenma's wi… To become Koenma's w… To be his… You know what I mean."

Hiei was struggling to think about Botan actually becoming Koenma's wife instead of his and so saying it out loud was even more of a challenge for him.

"How did you know that?" she asked. "Did Lord Koenma tell you?"

"Oh for fuck's sake, if you really are his lover, you don't need to call him "Lord" Koenma any more!" Hiei snapped irritably.

"…But I'm not his lover," she replied. "Not yet, anyway. I mean we've never… Why am I telling you this? It's not your business what Lord Koenma and I do!"

Hiei stiffened.

"You're giving up your ferry girl work, going through this trial and becoming something different and you've never even fucked him yet?" he asked.

Botan gasped, clapping both her hands over her mouth.

"Shit woman, I bet I at least had the decency to let you know what you were getting in return for what you're putting yourself through," he said, no longer thinking before the words left his mouth. "In fact, based on how kinky you are, you probably insisted on it. Pity for you then, apparently Koenma can't keep up with you – which is probably only to be expected. He is a child, after all."

"How dare you talk about Lord Koenma like that?" she whispered incredulously.

"Easily," Hiei replied.

"Lord Koenma is a wonderful man! He makes me very happy! He's fun! We have a lot in common! We've known each other for so long, and we've been on so many adventures together, I can trust him. He takes good care of me, he's reliable, he's kind-hearted, he's gentle, he's funny, he's playful, he's tall, he's very handsome and he respects me."

"Everything I'm not, right. But can he do this?"

Hiei leapt up and grabbed at Botan, finding that she was a little higher than he had anticipated, and he was only able to grab at the folds of her kimono around her knees before he started to fall down again. He tugged sharply to offset her balance, pulling her down with him and dropping her onto her feet. She staggered slightly but Hiei did not allow her the chance to find her balance before he grabbed hold of her face in both of his hands and forced his lips against hers. She squealed and squirmed against him and made no attempt to return his gesture, which was a little disappointing for him, but, determined to prove a point, Hiei tried moving his hands to her shoulders and around her back, intending to work his fingers down the length of her spine in the hope of evoking a positive response out of her.

When he heard a strange noise come from the back of Botan's throat and felt her body lurch Hiei quickly released her and pulled back. He managed to turn his head away completely and stagger back enough to avoid being hit as Botan's head fell forwards and she threw up on the point he had been standing on mere seconds earlier.

"…Well that answers that question…" he muttered to himself, giving her a withering look as she pulled a handkerchief from one sleeve with a shaking hand.

At least he had learned it somewhere that he would never have to face her again, he thought dryly.

"Why did you that?" she sobbed, wiping her handkerchief at the corners of her mouth as she spoke. "A girl's first kiss is supposed to be a sacred thing, and now you've ruined it for me!"

"Oh for fuck's sake, you haven't even kissed that brat?" Hiei snapped back. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Lord Koenma respects me!" she yelled, stamping a foot at him.

"Great, but does he even want to be your lover?"

"It's none of your business, you evil little man!"

"Hn, you have no idea what you're–"

Hiei stopped himself. Even in a reality where he actually could say whatever he wanted to without any repercussions on his own life he was not really sure that he wanted to finish that sentence. It always amused him when someone called him little or short because he knew that, whilst he was anything but tall, he was also anything but little or short where it really mattered: but he doubted that any Botan except the paradise Botan would really appreciate him pointing that out, and so he kept quiet.

"Lord Koenma is very kind and supportive and consistent, and we have great fun together," Botan eventually said.

"And you're really so in love with him that you're going to give up everything to become his wife?" Hiei returned.

"I'm not giving up anything but my oar and my ferry girl duties!" she said.

"And you're doing it because you love him?"

"He's very kind and supportive and–"

"That's not what I asked you. Do you love him?"

"This doesn't concern you, "Ambassador"!"

"…Hn, interesting…"

Hiei turned his back on Botan as he was through questioning her. He had answered two important questions that night and he was finished with her: first of all, he had learned that she was so scared of him that she was physically repulsed by him to the point of vomiting at his touch, so he could not rely on her previous attraction to him to make her change her mind about him, and secondly he had learned that she was not actually in love with Koenma, which was a slight consolation after learning the first lesson.

"Try to keep up," he said to her, before taking off.

Hiei deliberately moved at a speed he considered to be a casual jog so that Botan would be able to keep up with him. He thought that she could probably fly faster, but she was flying slightly awkwardly as though she was still tired and upset, so he did not try pushing her any further. Instead he continued on at his stunted pace until he reached the building Kuwabara worked in, stopping outside it and looking up at the countless blacked out windowpanes until he located the one illuminated one, which clearly indicated which part of the building Kuwabara was still working in.

"Idiot…" Hiei grumbled.

"What do you want with Kuwabara anyway?" Botan called down to him.

Hiei looked up, silently noting that this time, Botan was apparently not taking any chances on him surprising her again, as she was a good fifty feet up in the air.

"I just need to check something," he shouted up to her. "And then I'm going back home. There's nothing else here for me."

He walked up to the building entrance doors and tried to open them, finding that they were locked and apparently controlled by some sort of box with many buttons on it. Hiei barely cared for demon world technology, so he was not about to try to fathom the human world kind. He looked around the doors themselves for any indication of a weak point that he could break through without making too much noise or attracting any unwanted attention – not that it mattered in this reality, but it would matter back in his own reality when he was faced with the same challenge of trying to reach Kuwabara without alerting those pesky Special Defence Force officers to his location.

Unfortunately, Hiei could not see any obviously exploitable weakness in the doors: in fact, he thought miserably, all he could see was a stupid poster about someone with a foreign name he was unfamiliar with, apparently explaining that the person was looking for someone to design a new home for him in America and the closing date for proposals was only a few months away.

Hiei felt a strange sense of déjà vu and he briefly wondered why.

He then began climbing up the outside of the building to the one lit window and kicked his way through it, dropping into the room beyond.

"Huh? What?"

Hiei groaned as he stood up. Apparently he had just woken Kuwabara up.

"What the hell just happened?" Kuwabara cried, getting to his feet and staring at the shattered window.

"Over here, idiot," Hiei said flatly.

Kuwabara spun around, gasping as he caught sight of Hiei.

"Do you know who I am?" Hiei asked.

"No," Kuwabara slowly replied. "But if you're the one who just broke that window, I'm calling the police."

"Do you know who Yukina is?" Hiei asked, ignoring Kuwabara's threat.

"Yu… Yukina?"

Kuwabara's face flickered slightly and for a brief moment Hiei thought that the mention of his sister's name had somehow undone what the Special Defence Force had done to Kuwabara's mind, as he appeared concerned and deep in thought as though his memories of Yukina and how she had been taken from him were returning.

"I've really got no idea what you're talking about or who you are," Kuwabara eventually said, shattering Hiei's hopes that he was finally making progress with the idiot. "Or why you're here. But you know, breaking into this building is a crime, and since I witnessed it, I'm gonna have to report it–"

"I'm not finished yet," Hiei interrupted him. "If you can't remember anything you're no use to me for breaking the Kakai Barrier, but your immunity to reality shifts is still something that I need explained. Nothing I've done or said has changed you in anyway, whether or not Yukina is still here with you, except for the paradise reality. Why did my marrying Botan change you so much?"

Kuwabara's face started to twist and Hiei realised why: nothing he had said would make any sense to him.

"Alright," he said slowly, trying to think like the diplomat he was currently dressed as. "How about this instead: why is the old lady's temple ruined in my reality? Why does nobody but Yukina maintain the place? And why don't you live there?"

"Are you asking me where I live?" Kuwabara asked him. "I've never seen you before, I'm hardly gonna tell you where I live. Do your parents know that you're out this late? And what's with those clothes? You're not one of those dorky kids who likes role-playing games, are you?"

Hiei sighed. He could not think of any way of explaining to Kuwabara what he wanted, so he instead took a moment to use his jagan eye to seek out the old lady's temple: and he found that it looked exactly as it did in his own reality. He supposed that Yukina was the only one who was able to stop that from happening, since it had appeared in perfect order in the realities where Yukina had still been in the living world; but that also got him no closer to explaining Kuwabara's immunity to alternate realities.

And frankly, he was starting to get really, really pissed off with Kuwabara.

"You're doing something," he said, closing his third eye and ignoring the horrified look on Kuwabara's face as he stared at his forehead. "I don't know what, but you're doing something and it's making you completely immune to everything else! You need to tell me what it is, because maybe if I do it too, I can fix this mess!"

"Hiei?"

Hiei turned to the broken window, seeing Botan hovering there, still on the outside. As he met her eyes she shook her head.

"Please don't confuse Kuwabara," she said meekly. "He's been through so much, it's terrible that he doesn't remember, but please don't confuse him. He's just trying to move on with his life."

Hiei sighed. This was a pointless reality, but it had done one thing for him: he now no longer needed to find a way into the building he was in, because he was already in it.

"Come in here," he said, beckoning to Botan to enter.

Kuwabara's head swung from side to side, his eyes looking between Hiei and the window.

"Who are you talking to?" he asked.

Hiei sighed.

"What, now he can't even see you any more?" he grumbled as Botan carefully flew in through the hole in the window.

"His psychic abilities come and go," she replied. "He can't remember how to control them, so…"

"Never mind," Hiei sighed, grabbing at his clothing and ripping it open to expose his wound.

"What are you doing?" Botan cried.

"Just… Heal this wound," he replied, pointing at the cross-mark on his abdomen.

"Oh…" she said, nodding slowly.

She placed her hands over the wound and kept her head down, but Hiei did not miss the words she said next.

"Would it kill you to say please?"

Hiei growled, closing his eyes and focusing on containing his anger.

"Oh God!"

Hiei opened his eyes again abruptly in time to see Kuwabara stagger backwards, one foot stamping into a trashcan. He staggered around a little longer before falling over a chair and landing hard on the ground. Hiei looked over at the window, finding it once more whole, and Botan gone without a trace.

"Where the hell did you come from?" Kuwabara yelped, grabbing at a desk and kicking the trashcan from his foot. "You just appeared there out of nowhere!"

"Hn," Hiei grunted. "Never mind about that."

"What the… Hey wait a minute, don't I know you?"

Hiei halted, once more feeling that vague sense of hope that Kuwabara was finally remembering who he was supposed to be.

"Oh yeah, I do know you!" Kuwabara said, waggling a finger at him. "You're that little punk who made me drop my lunch!"

Hiei groaned and rolled his eyes.

"You're useless, you know that?" he snapped irritably. "I need answers, and you're the only one who can give them to me! I can't go to Kurama, and you're the only one immune to… Wait a minute…"

Hiei wondered if he was going insane. Either that or he was growing incredibly desperate, he decided.

"I could go to Shuichi…" he muttered to himself.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei has a few more questions for Kuwabara before he hides out for the night and then goes to visit Shuichi in the morning. Shuichi has a very unique take on why Hiei is experiencing what he is in the other realities and he offers Hiei an immediate solution to his problems: but it's not the answer Hiei wanted to hear. **Chapter 15 – Bad Decisions**

 **A/N:** The good news is that the next two chapters are mostly based in Hiei's own reality, in the living world and in spirit world, basically to update on what has been going on in his own reality since he began leaping about through alternate dimensions. The bad news is that after that, the next ten or so chapters will be more than 90 percent based in alternate realities (though only really focussing on two of them in any depth). After that I can't say where Hiei will be without spoiling plot…

Also please review. Reviews make me happy and productive.


	15. Bad Decisions

**A/N:** **This is one of those chapters where the entire plot is laid out in front of Hiei but he doesn't see it – the very observant may notice a few major clues in there, but it's probably one of those chapters that seems more obvious after you've read the entire fic – not that I'm suggesting anyone should read this more than once…**

 **Recap:** Hiei visited a reality where he was Mukuro's ambassador and learned that Yusuke is trying to get the Kakai Barrier removed. He learned that negotiating can be fun and that Botan is disgusted by him in any reality where he did not save her life (probably including his own reality) and he tried confronting Kuwabara but got no answers. He returned to his own reality with the idea of confronting the Kuwabara there and talking to Shuichi again.

* * *

 **Chapter 15: Bad Decisions**

"Look, I don't know how you got in here, or why you keep following me around, but if you leave right now, I promise I won't call the police."

"I don't want to stay here, idiot!"

Kuwabara narrowed his eyes at Hiei but said no more.

"I'm leaving now, I'll walk you out," he said flatly.

"I'm capable of walking myself out," Hiei replied.

"But I'm the one locking the building, I need to make sure that you do actually leave," Kuwabara said.

"Fine then, do what you must."

Kuwabara glared at Hiei a little longer before gathering up his briefcase, straightening his jacket and walking towards him.

"Stay in front of me where I can see you," he said.

Hiei obliged Kuwabara's request, mainly because he could not really be bothered trying to make sense of the human any more. He was still sure that Kuwabara possessed some sort of item or power that allowed him to remain immune to the shifts in reality, and he still believed that if he could somehow harness whatever it was, he could probably control where he went when he travelled through dimensions. But finding out what it was would require patience and a willingness to deal with Kuwabara – more especially, it would require a willingness to deal with a Kuwabara who could not remember him, Yukina, Botan, Kurama, Yusuke or anything about any of the adventures they had been on together.

"Idiot," Hiei sighed aloud.

"What did you just say?" Kuwabara asked as they got into an elevator.

Hiei hated elevators and usually never bothered with them – they were too slow – but again he obliged for the sake of not having to explain himself.

"I said you're an idiot, idiot!" Hiei sneered at Kuwabara as the doors closed them into the elevator.

"You don't even know me!" Kuwabara replied. "And I'm doing you a big favour letting you out of here!"

"I'm doing you an even bigger favour," Hiei muttered under his breath. "I'm going back to a place where you've still got a shred of dignity and a sense of purpose…"

"What did you just say?"

"Nothing."

"Arrogant dwarf…"

Hiei shifted his eyes to Kuwabara, eying him over pensively. He was silently assessing which might work better to knock him out and try to get a look inside his head: a punch to the face, pushing him into the wall, a punch to the face, tripping him when he tried to leave the elevator or a punch to the face.

"I'm gonna find out where you live and tell your parents about the shenanigans that you get up to if you bother me again," Kuwabara warned him as the elevator stopped moving.

Hiei allowed him to walk out, following after him in silence. He had a feeling that knocking Kuwabara out would not actually make any difference anyway. The Special Defence Force had obviously done a very precise and undoable job of making him forget who he was supposed to be and what he was truly capable of, a point that had been proved in the reality Hiei had just left where Kuwabara had been unable to see Botan.

As they walked towards the doors out of the building, Hiei caught sight of a poster in the foyer about someone with a foreign name he was unfamiliar with, apparently explaining that the person was looking for someone to design a new home for him in America and the closing date for proposals was only a few months away.

Hiei stopped abruptly. He had seen that poster before, and more than once, and there was something slightly odd about it.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asked Kuwabara.

"Huh?" Kuwabara asked, turning to look back at him.

"This advertisement," Hiei said, pointing at the poster. "What is the meaning of it?"

"Oh, you've never heard of that guy?"

"No."

"Oh well he moved here to Japan a few years ago and now he's going back to America. Some local architect designed a house here for him when he came here and he really liked it, but the guy who built it is dead now, so he's looking for someone else to build something similar. I think he likes Japanese architecture, because the contract would relocate the designer to America until the house is built. My boss is trying to win it… Are you interested in architecture, little guy?"

Hiei fought back the urge to punch Kuwabara in the face.

"Fascinated," he said, holding back as much of his sarcasm as he possibly could.

"Really?" Kuwabara asked.

"Absolutely," Hiei replied.

"Well then check this out," Kuwabara said. "This is the house the guy had built for him before. He said he never totally liked it, but he has some sort of obsession with wooden houses."

"Wooden houses?" Hiei asked.

"Houses made of wood?"

Kuwabara offered Hiei a leaflet, which he promptly snatched from him, finding that it looked mostly like the poster in front of him. Until he opened it up.

"What the fuck is this?" he asked, horrified at what he found within the leaflet.

"That's the house that guy lives in right now," Kuwabara replied. "Weird, huh? It's made completely out of wood."

"It looks like a cheap and crappy version of my house," Hiei said. "Except this one is on legs instead of in trees."

Hiei frowned slightly, another strange sense of déjà vu passing over him. He supposed it was because the house pictured in the leaflet he held did look just as he had described: a cheap and crappy version of the tree-house he lived in in the paradise reality. In fact, it looked as though someone with limited intelligence, ingenuity and poor craftsmanship had seen his tree-house and tried to replicate it in a grassy area devoid of trees, building the house up onto stilts instead of into the trunks of trees.

"Who built this?" Hiei asked Kuwabara.

"The guy who built it died," Kuwabara replied.

"Shit," Hiei moaned.

He had been pondering the possibility of finding the person responsible and forcing him or her to build the tree-house for him in his own reality: but apparently that was now something else that could never happen for him in this reality.

"A child could have done better than this," he concluded, tossing the leaflet over his shoulder. "Unless your boss is a completely useless fool, I have no doubt that he will win."

Kuwabara hurried to pick up the leaflet and Hiei moved on without him. Outside the streets were dark and mostly empty: but Hiei was not fooled. He knew that the spirit world Special Defence Force would be nearby waiting for him.

Or perhaps not, he thought. Perhaps they were still in spirit world guarding the meeting between Koenma and Yusuke and – if the reality he had just visited was any indication to go by – they would continue to be busy there whilst Koenma met with Mukuro's representative and Yomi's representative. Feeling reasonably confident that this was indeed the case, Hiei began his journey across the city towards the hospital Shuichi was staying at. He decided that, if he made it there without the faintest hint of anyone pursuing him, he would spend the night near to the hospital and then pretend to be a human visitor to see Shuichi the next morning – the most sensible thing he could do to avoid attracting any unwanted attention to himself, he decided.

As he ran, Hiei wondered what the others – Mukuro, Kurama and Yusuke – would think of him if they knew that he was starting to learn how to be diplomatic.

* * *

The next morning Hiei awoke a little later than he had meant to, though he was glad to have had the extended rest. When he got up and began moving around he realised that his torn shirt would probably draw attention to him, along with his jagan eye – he was no longer wearing a bandana to cover it – so he shot off to a nearby park and stole himself a temporarily discarded jacket from a park bench and then played his fingers through his hair, pulling it down thicker over his forehead to help conceal the linear indent of his closed third eye.

Going undercover was something else Hiei had never imagined himself ever doing.

He remembered that Kurama's human mother had taken him to a desk inside the hospital when he had gone there with her, and she had asked to see Shuichi Minamino: so Hiei climbed up a nearby tree, leapt onto the roof of the tall building, walked over it to the back of the building and then hopped his way down to the gardens there to commence his search for Shuichi.

And by luck, Hiei did not have to search for long. He soon located Shuichi – distinguishable as ever by his long flowing mane of brilliant red hair – sat on a pristine white garden chair on a patio by a small rose garden, his nose stuck in a book about trees. Hiei hurried over to him and sat down hard onto a chair at his side. Shuichi lifted his eyes from the pages of his book, looking directly at Hiei without a hint of surprise or concern.

"Hiei," he said, reaching one hand into his hair.

Hiei tensed on instinct, but again Shuichi merely pulled a bookmark from his hair, placing it into his book and closing it over.

"How nice to see you again," he continued. "It that a new jacket?"

"I need your help," Hiei replied, ignoring his question for the mindless small talk that it was. "I have to tell you something and you have to tell me how to fix it."

"I see," Shuichi said, placing his book down onto the ground by his feet. "Now you have my fullest attention: what's bothering you?"

"I've been visiting alternate realities," Hiei replied. "And one of them was the right one, but I can't get back to it. You're a clever – well, Kurama was a clever bastard – I just wanted to know if you knew how I could fix it so that I can get back to where I belong."

"Alright," Shuichi said, nodding slowly. "So this is the wrong reality for you? You don't belong here?"

"Well obviously I don't! Look what's happened to you – to Kurama – in this reality!"

"Is this your first time in this reality?"

"No, this is the reality I came from originally."

"…I thought you said that this was not the "right" reality?"

"It's not!"

Shuichi gave him an excessively curious and confused look that Kurama would never have so blatantly expressed, once more reminding Hiei that he was probably wasting his time, since this was not Kurama that he was speaking to, but rather a human who happened to know Kurama quite well.

"Perhaps we should backtrack a little," Shuichi suggested. "Are you the same Hiei who visited me here with my mother a few days ago?"

"Yes," Hiei replied.

"And are you the Hiei of this reality?"

"Yes."

"But you've been visiting other realities?"

"Yes."

"And how have you managed that?"

"Mukuro. It's a new attack she has, she can send me to other realities."

"Interesting. Is that how you have managed to come to the living world despite the ban on you doing so and the presence of the Kakai Barrier?"

"Yes, the Kakai Barrier isn't always present in other realities I visit – you remember me telling you that the Kakai Barrier was back up?"

"But of course."

Hiei glared at Shuichi for a long time, but the confidence in his eyes did not waver: perhaps there was some hope for him after all.

"I've visited some seriously strange realities," Hiei said. "But the first one I visited was like paradise. Everything was perfect for everyone, especially for me. I need to get back there."

"You intend to return to an alternate reality and remain there?" Shuichi asked.

"Exactly," Hiei replied. "But I need to know how. Every time Mukuro uses her attack on me, she sends me to a stupid reality that I don't want to be in."

"What sort of realities are they?"

"Alternate ones. What sort of question is that?"

"I meant what is the basis of them? Are they abstract? For example, have you visited a reality where you were born a woman?"

Hiei's eyes doubled in size and his hand closed redundantly around the space the hilt of his sword ought to be occupying by the top of the scabbard at his hip – and he again made a mental note to get himself a replacement sword when he returned to demon world – and only because his weapon was not readily to hand did he not cut Shuichi down.

"I'm a man, you idiot!" he snapped. "Why would I visit a reality where I was a woman?"

"It's a possibility in an alternate reality," Shuichi replied, shrugging defensively. "I was theorising that you might have visited a reality where gender roles were reversed: perhaps the ice village was populated by ice men instead of ice maidens, and you, born as a woman of fire, were cast out."

"…You're asking me if I've visited a reality where I had a vagina and my mother had a penis?" Hiei asked flatly.

"That's a very literal way to look at it, but yes," Shuichi anwered.

"…No. I've always been a man. I've always been a man who doesn't appreciate being thought of as a woman…"

"I see. So in the other realities you've visited, you've always been as you are now?"

"No! I was a… I was an ambassador in the last reality I visited."

"Interesting. I'm trying to gauge what the base point is for the alternate realities. Is it beyond your control?"

Hiei's face dropped. Shuichi still spoke like Kurama – cryptically and often as though he was not really listening.

"I'm visiting other realities that happened because I did something differently," he eventually said.

"Oh!" Shuichi said. "So these are realities created by your own decisions in life?"

"Exactly," Hiei replied.

"So you've been able to see how different your own life could have been had you made a different decision at a certain point in your life?"

"Exactly!"

"And you say the first reality you visited was the best?"

"Yes."

"Better than this one?"

"Infinitely better than this one."

"And what about the other realities?"

"They were all awful."

"How many have you visited?"

"Six, including the paradise reality."

"So including this reality, that's seven different variations of your life, and of those seven, you only liked one?"

"Yes."

"Oh dear."

Hiei frowned.

"What do you mean "oh dear"?" he demanded.

"I mean it would seem as though you have a penchant for making a lot of bad decisions, my good friend," Shuichi replied.

Hiei growled, his lips slowly peeling back from his tightly clenched teeth.

"First of all, I am not your "good friend"," he pointed out. "And secondly, I have no regrets and I make no mistakes!"

Shuichi tilted his head slightly.

"But obviously you do have regrets and you do mistakes," he said too calmly and confidently for Hiei's liking. "Otherwise this reality would be the one that you called "paradise"."

Hiei started to feel that loss of self-control that overtook him when his anger flared. He lurched at Shuichi, but the human somehow managed to move out of his reach, standing smoothly and walking over to a group of other patients sat on stools facing easels. Hiei settled himself back into his chair and tugged at the stolen jacket he was wearing, trying to recover some of his dignity. Shuichi had helped himself to an easel and was walking back over to him, smiling a vague, irksome smile that only Kurama should have been allowed to smile.

"Let's map this out," he suggested, standing the easel in front of Hiei. "Here we are in your own reality…"

Shuichi wrote the word "norm" onto the top left of the paper pinned to the easel and drew a circle around it.

"And the first alternate reality you visited was "paradise"…" he said, writing the word "paradise" underneath "norm" and circling it. "Where did you go to next?"

Hiei scrunched up his face involuntarily as he remembered where he had been next.

"One of the messed up realities," he eventually answered.

"Give it a name," Shuichi prompted, his pen hovering over the paper below "paradise".

"Shit?" Hiei offered.

"…If we do call it shit, what will we call the other four realities?"

"Shit?"

Shuichi's face darkened slightly, and it made him look a little more like the Kurama Hiei had once known.

"What was different in the second reality you visited?" he asked. "Perhaps we can think of a better name for it if I know what happened there."

"Botan was a zombie," Hiei bluntly replied.

"Right…" Shuichi said. "But that reality came about from a decision that you made?"

"Of course," Hiei said.

"So what was the decision? What was the difference there?"

"I ki… I ki… I kissed Keiko."

"You kissed Keiko? Yusuke's Keiko?"

"Yes! I kissed her as part of a game, and then, for no apparent reason, I took her as my lover, and Yusuke took Botan!"

"You seem angry that Yusuke was dating Botan–"

"Angry? I'm fucking furious!"

Shuichi slowly straightened up, looking about himself nervously as everyone else in the garden stopped what they were doing and looked over at Hiei's overly loud outburst.

"Didn't…" he began quietly. "Didn't you always hate Botan? I thought that was why we lost touch: you let her die."

""We" never "lost touch"!" Hiei replied, keeping his voice quieter to avoid attracting any more unwanted attention in his direction. "Kurama and I "lost touch", but you and me were never "in touch" to have "lost touch"!"

"Okay…" Shuichi said, a hint of impatience passing over his eyes. "Could you tell me why you're so angry that Yusuke would date Botan?"

"Because, idiot, she's married to me!" Hiei ground out.

"Botan is married to you? When did that happen?"

"It didn't happen here, it happened in paradise. She married me, and we have a son and another son on the way and we live in the living world."

Shuichi dropped the pen, but he appeared not to notice as he was too busy glaring at Hiei incredulously, his face twisted in a way Kurama would never have let it do.

"I'm not sure that I understand, Hiei," he said, his face twisting further as he spoke. "Are you telling me that the reality you are referring to as "paradise" is a place where you are married – to Botan, of all people – with children and living in the living world?"

"That's exactly what I'm telling you!" Hiei replied impatiently.

"But Hiei, you hate Botan, you despise the living world and you detest children," Shuichi said, shaking his head. "Why would you want those things? You don't have them in this reality because you never wanted them: a reality where you do have those things is just a freak occurrence! A strange, unique, singular, highly unlikely, infinitely improbable–"

"Yes, I get the point! Now are you going to tell me how to get back there or not?"

Shuichi gave Hiei a long scrutinising look before softening slightly.

"Well, as unexpected as this is, alright then," he eventually said, crouching down to retrieve his pen. "So the second reality you visited was a reality where you were with Keiko and Yusuke was with Botan, instead of the other way around?"

"Exactly," Hiei said, feeling slightly relieved that the idiot finally seemed to understand.

"So let's call that "switch" reality," he said, writing the word "switch" beneath "paradise" and circling it. "And the third reality was – I'm sorry, really?"

He turned around and gave Hiei another disbelieving look and Hiei started to become angered again.

"You really want to get back to a reality where you're married to Botan, you have children and you live in the living world?" Shuichi asked.

"Yes, I really do," Hiei growled back.

"…Maybe those doctors are right: maybe I am crazy. The Hiei I knew would never have wanted those things, they would have been like hell for him and he would never have willingly tried to–"

"It's not just my life that's better there! You're still Kurama and you still live here in the living world, Yusuke is still living as a human with his woman and my sister is still here in the living world and she's happy! If you can't do this for me, then do it for yourself! Do you like living like this?"

Shuichi looked about himself, the corners of his mouth dropping and his eyes glistening over.

"I can't say that this is an ideal existence for me," he said sadly. "But I worry about my mother. My stepfather left her – he couldn't handle what had become of me and how depressed she became as a result of it. As long as I'm stuck in here, my mother is all alone, and I know that she finds it very hard sometimes. I wish for my freedom, but really only so that I can be with her again."

"In paradise you own a shop on the same street your mother lives on," Hiei said.

"Really?"

"Yes. Now will you help me?"

Shuichi nodded and turned back to the easel.

"Tell me about the third reality you visited," he said.

"The third one was…"

Hiei trailed off as he recalled being tied up naked in Mukuro's office.

"I was Mukuro's sex slave," he said in a low voice.

"So that was "sex slave" reality," Shuichi said.

"Don't write that down!" Hiei yelped. "Somebody might see that!"

Shuichi threw him a smile over his shoulder but continued regardless, circling the words "sex slave".

"And the fourth reality…?" he asked.

Hiei growled in frustration, but decided not to bother arguing the term "sex slave" since those had been the words that he himself had used to describe it, and they were a worryingly accurate description of the reality in question.

"I was the general of Mukuro's army in the fourth reality," he said. "And Botan was an officer of the SDF."

"So that was "soldier" reality…" Shuichi said, writing it down as he spoke. "And the fifth was…?"

"I was disfigured. My face was badly scarred from saving Botan from the rock monster."

"So that was "scarface" reality – oh, a reality where you did actually save Botan, how interesting…"

"I saved her in the paradise reality too, you idiot, that was how she became my wife."

"But she wasn't you wife in the scarface reality?"

"…No."

"Okay. What about the sixth reality?"

"I was Mukuro's ambassador."

"So that was "ambassador" reality. Okay. Now all we need to do it find the common denominator between all these realities, and then you can figure out what you have to do next."

Hiei snarled angrily at Shuichi, who barely flinched in response.

"I already know what the common denominator is, you idiot!" he roared. "It's me! I'm the common denominator! Mukuro already explained that part!"

"Well, yes, you are the common denominator in that all realities relate to you and your decisions," Shuichi agreed. "But there must be other common denominators. For example, there's Kurama."

Shuichi wrote "Kurama" at the very top of the page.

"In "paradise" you say he was still in my body and living in the living world," he said. "So let's say he was Kurama Minamino. But in "norm", Kurama is a full demon and Shuichi is a separate person. So that would be Youko Kurama plus Shuichi Minamino. So I was different between those two realities. What about the other realities? Did you encounter Kurama in any of them?"

"Yes, but I don't understand the point of this," Hiei said. "I'm getting bored, and when I get bored I get pissed off, and when I get pissed off, things start to burn or die. Or both."

"I'm trying to find common grounding across the places that you have visited," Shuichi patiently replied. "If we can find the common denominators across these multiverses, we may be able to find a starting point to fix this mess from."

"…Fine. In "switch" you were exactly the same as you were in paradise."

"Okay…"

"In "sex slave" I think you were the same as in paradise, I never checked."

"Okay."

"In "soldier" Kurama was the general of Yomi's army, so I assume that you were the same as you are here. In "scarface" Kurama was the general of Yomi's army and you were probably like you are now and in ambassador Kurama was the general of Yomi's army and so you must have been like you are here."

"I see. So Kurama and I were different in a few instances. What about Yusuke? You said that he was with Botan in "switch"?"

"Yes, and they lived in demon world. In "paradise" he was with Keiko and they lived in the living world. In "sex slave" I didn't check, but I think Botan said he was with Keiko in the living world. In "soldier", "scarface" and "ambassador" he was the same as he is in "norm": the general of his own army, living in demon world and at war."

"So again, he is not really consistent. What about Kuwabara?"

"Hn, Kuwabara. He was completely unaffected wherever I went, the bastard!"

"Interesting. Very interesting. He was unchanged across all seven realities?"

"Apart from "paradise", yes."

"He was different in "paradise"?"

"Yes."

"How so?"

"He wasn't such a whiny asshole."

Shuichi paused, his pen hovering beneath Kuwabara's name.

"Can you be more specific?" he asked.

"Well…" Hiei began. "Kuwabara is an "apprentice" in every reality and he works all the time. But in "paradise" he never seems to do anything but sing karaoke and fawn over my sister."

"Ah!" Shuichi said, turning to face Hiei. "Kuwabara is with Yukina in the paradise reality, that must be why he's different there!"

"No," Hiei replied, shaking his head. "He was with her in "switch" and "sex slave" too, but they were both… Different somehow. And he was a whiny asshole."

Shuichi nodded.

"So I'll put whiny asshole against every reality except "paradise"," he said, writing as he spoke.

"And you can call him "tool" in "paradise"," Hiei suggested. "Because there he was mostly just a tool who ran around after my son."

"Okay… What about Yukina then? Her life must have been different."

"In "paradise", "switch" and "sex slave" she lived with Kuwabara in the old lady's temple. In the other realities she was back in the ice village."

"That's strange… Now what about Botan?"

"She's my wife."

"Right, in "paradise" she was your wife. What about the other realities? Obviously she was something other than your wife for you to dislike them all so much."

"Exactly."

"In "switch" you say she was a zombie and with Yusuke. What about the other realities?"

"In "sex slave" she was just her usual self, a ferry girl like she used to be. In "soldier" she was a soldier of the SDF. In "scarface" and "ambassador" she was a ferry girl but she was getting ready to become Koenma's woman."

"And what is she in this reality, in "norm"?"

"The same as "scarface" and "ambassador": a ferry girl about to become Koenma's woman."

"Okay, and what about Keiko?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"Please try to think Hiei, there might be a clue there."

Hiei sighed, suppressing his mounting boredom as best he could.

"In "paradise" and "sex slave" she was with Yusuke – I think, I never checked in "sex slave", but I think Botan said as much," he said.

"Okay. And in "switch" she was with you…"

"I didn't check the other realities but I think she must have been the same there as she is in "norm"."

"Which is?"

"A whiny bitch."

"Right…"

Shuichi finished writing and stood back to admire his handiwork.

"So the person least affected by your decisions was Kuwabara," he concluded.

"I already knew that," Hiei growled.

"Which means that, no matter which reality you were in, Kuwabara was only one decision away from becoming how he was in "paradise"."

"…What?"

"And Kurama only alternated between two different circumstances: either he was the general of Yomi's army – with me stuck here like this – or he was still in my body and in the living world, which means that in some of the other realities you visited, he was already in his "paradise" state, and in the others, he was only one decision away from becoming that way."

"I see…"

"Keiko and Yusuke both alternate between two different circumstances with the one exception of "switch", where they presented a third circumstance. So, in every reality apart from "switch", they were already living as they were in "paradise" or they were only one decision away from it. Botan had several different roles, as did you. You were drastically different because the realities were caused by your decisions, but the fact that Botan changed so much tells us that she is the most closely linked to the decision you've made in your life, and Kuwabara is the least connected."

"I understand."

Hiei stood up from his chair, feeling the most positive that he had since visiting the paradise reality.

"You do?" Shuichi asked, turning to him curiously.

"Yes," he replied with a nod of his head. "I just need to travel back in time to the moment that I made the first decision that split "norm" from "paradise" and do it over again, but this time do it properly, including not messing up like I did in "scarface"."

"Tra-travel back in time?" Shuichi echoed.

"Yes," Hiei replied. "I need to get the device that lets you travel back in time."

"The device that lets you travel back in time?"

"Yes, you know. That spirit world artefact that you can use to go back in time and change a moment in your life."

"Is that a sort of device that lets you take back a single moment – steal a moment in time, if you will – and change it, thus altering all subsequent events in history at the risk of destroying the entire universe?"

"That's the one. It's a sort of hand-held, cylindrical device that you can set alight and ask to take you to a specific point in history, and it lets you stay there for a limited time only, which allows you to change history, before it sends you back into the new future that you created."

"Like a magical stick of dynamite that steals a single moment in time?"

"Yes. They probably call it "The Stolen Moment" or something like that?"

""The Stolen Moment"?"

"Yes. Where do you think they would hide such a device?"

"I don't think that such a device exists, Hiei."

"No?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"…Then why did I get a strange sense of déjà vu when we were talking about it?"

"…Maybe you found it some other alternate reality, but there's definitely no such thing in this reality."

"Hn. Too bad. That might have worked."

Shuichi and Hiei stood in silence for a few moments before Shuichi forced a smile and continued.

"Anyway, it would seem that, in order to fix "norm", you need to start with the easiest option–"

"Wait, what?" Hiei interrupted him.

"In order to fix this reality, you need to–"

"In order to do what?"

"In order to fix this reality?"

"…Why the hell would I want to fix this reality? It's broken apart beyond repair! I want to get back to the paradise reality! That was the whole point of all of this! You were supposed to tell me how I get back to "paradise"!"

"…I am trying to tell you how to get to "paradise". You get there by fixing "norm", turning this reality into "paradise"."

"No!"

"Yes."

"No!"

"Yes!"

"No!"

"Yes, Hiei, it's the only way! Don't you see? All of these realities were created by you! You have the ability to make any single one of these realities become your own at any time!"

"That's not true!"

"Yes it is! You made decisions to create all of these realities, good or bad! You made those situations once before and you can make them again or not based on what you do here and now."

Hiei shook his head.

"You don't understand at all!" he yelled. "I can't believe I came here thinking that you could be as clever as Kurama! Look at you: you're nothing! You're just a hollow human who's lost his mind because he thinks he's as good as the demon that once possessed his body!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Shuichi quietly replied. "But before you leave – and I can tell that you are about to make a dramatic exit – let me first tell you this: those other realities, those realities you could only call "shit" came about because you made a lot of bad decisions. The one good reality came about because you made a good decision. If you want to fix your problems Hiei there's only one small thing you have to do: stop making bad decisions."

"You arrogant…"

Hiei paused. He wanted to make the dramatic exit that Shuichi had suggested he would, but something was holding him back.

"Why did the paradise reality happen?" Shuichi asked him, his voice still quiet yet firm, the same tone Kurama had used when he was controlling a situation with his words, Hiei noted.

"Because I saved Botan from the rock monster," Hiei replied.

"That was a good decision," Shuichi said. "Now what about the other realities? Why did this reality come about?"

"Because I didn't save Botan from the rock monster and because I killed the ambassador who was supposed to give the speech that stopped the war," Hiei answered.

"Those were both bad decisions. Now what about the "switch" reality? Why did that happen?"

"Because I kissed Yusuke's girlfriend Keiko."

"Which was a bad decision. What about the "sex slave" reality?"

"I chose to be my own boss Mukuro's lover."

"Which was a bad decision. What about the "soldier" reality?"

"I didn't save Botan from the rock monster and then I didn't apologise to her properly."

"Which was a bad decision. What about the "scarface" reality?"

"I didn't ask Botan to marry me a second time, instead I just yelled at her and killed a bunch of people."

"Which was a bad decision. And the "ambassador" reality?"

"I volunteered to be Mukuro's ambassador, and I didn't save Botan from the rock monster."

"Both were bad decisions. And in some of those realities, you had gotten partway towards the "paradise" reality before making a secondary bad decision instead of continuing the good decisions that led to the nirvana you are now so desperately seeking. Can you see the series of good decisions you made when you consider these other outcomes?"

Shuichi pulled the piece of paper he had written on from the easel and held it up in front of himself. Hiei eyed it over, but did not really bother actually reading any of it.

"Of course I can," he grumbled. "I saved Botan, I didn't kill Hitoshi and I asked her to marry me a second time."

"And what's stopping you from doing any of those things now in this reality?" Shuichi asked.

"Hitoshi is already dead in this reality and the war is ongoing," Hiei reminded him.

"But what's stopping you asking Botan to marry you?"

"She hates me, she's scared of me and she's already agreed to marry Koenma."

"So then take it back a step. Fix something else in this picture and try again."

"That's what I intend to do. I intend to try again to get back to the right reality, but I was hoping there was a way I could guarantee that I would get there this time."

Shuichi sighed, folding up the piece of paper he held.

"Hiei, I honestly think that you're taking the wrong approach to this," he said.

"And I honestly don't care what you think," Hiei frankly replied.

"Well obviously that's not true, or you would not have come here," Shuichi replied, holding out the folded piece of paper towards him.

"You're an idiot," Hiei said, snatching the paper from him.

"Go away, have a sleep and then look at that chart again," Shuichi suggested. "You might see it differently after a rest and some time to think. There's probably something that you're overlooking, but I think the most important thing you need to remember is that you need to stop making bad decisions, Hiei."

"It's too late for that in this reality. Botan is lost to me here. I can't even get close to her. It doesn't matter how many "good decisions" I make here and now, I'll never get to know her or be a part of anything she does."

Hiei looked down at the paper in his hands for several seconds before crushing it into a ball and bouncing it off Shuichi's forehead.

"Thanks for nothing, human," he said.

He turned and started to walk away only to freeze in horrified disbelief as he felt the balled up paper hit him in the back of the head.

"Take it with you," Shuichi called after him. "Just because it doesn't make any sense or mean anything to you now doesn't mean that it never will. Just think about it, Hiei. You're not the only one who would rather be living in "paradise"."

"Hn, idiot," Hiei muttered, bending down and retrieving the ball of paper.

He made a show of stuffing it into his pants pocket for Shuichi's sake: he had no interest in what was written on the page or in ever looking at it again, but he supposed that it was cruel to torture such a mentally weak human so he continued his charade and left with the paper in his pocket.

Hiei scaled the perimeter wall of the gardens, nimbly picking his way over the lines of barbed wire at the top of the wall and dropped down at the other side. He started to walk along the road back towards the city with no real purpose for doing so, but shortly felt that he was being followed: obviously Koenma's meetings were over and the Special Defence Force were once more deployed in the living world and looking for him.

Hiei started to run, but he quickly wondered why he was bothering: after all, the Special Defence Force were his only means for getting back to demon world as they were the only ones able to create an opening in the Kakai Barrier, and he did need to get back to demon world and Mukuro if he was going to return to the paradise reality.

And so, after a few minutes of pointless running and dodging, Hiei let the soldiers catch him and drag him back to spirit world yet again.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei is brought in front of Koenma again, but this time the conversation goes in a slightly different direction when Botan joins them and Koenma makes a shocking revelation that leaves both Hiei and Botan confused and upset. Afterwards Hiei considers Shuichi's chart a little more and then he moves on to the next reality – and he's in for a pleasant surprise when he gets there. **Chapter 16 – The Monzan Denominator**

 **A/N:** Self-referential mindless indulgence with the time travel cutaway in this chapter – couldn't help myself. Also Hiei finally said "anything she does"!


	16. The Monzan Denominator

**A/N:** **Slight plot swerve warning – because now the story is going to start happening**

 **Advance apologies for slightly negative portrayals of Koenma and Mukuro – it all has a purpose, I promise!**

 **Recap:** Hiei tried to find out some clues from the Kuwabara for his own reality about why he was immune to changes in reality but gave up (AND DIDN'T PAY ATTENTION TO SOMETHING KUWABARA WAS TRYING TO TELL HIM). Hiei then went to see Shuichi, who told him that the key to paradise was not travelling across realities, but rather fixing his own reality – which Hiei (WRONGLY) rejected the idea of.

* * *

 **Chapter 16: The Monzan Denominator**

"Oh, Hiei, here we go again," Koenma said with a heavy sigh.

Hiei wanted to punch the prince more than ever. He had to assume that Koenma had been up all night in negotiations – the ogre at his side certainly looked as though he had been up all night as he was bleary eyed and dragging his feet – and yet still Koenma looked perfectly refreshed and almost too pretty in his now apparently permanent adult form.

"Back in the living world again," he said.

"Yes," Hiei replied. "And you know why that is. I know you know why. And you know that I know you know why."

Koenma met Hiei's eyes and frowned slightly.

"Nothing like a nicely illogical conundrum to start the day," he commented sarcastically.

"Just send me back to demon world, it was a mistake," Hiei replied.

"A mistake?" Koenma repeated. "But hopefully one that you learned a great deal from?"

Hiei narrowed his eyes.

"I'm not obliged to tell you anything about that," he said coldly. "Demon world affairs are not your business, they never were, and they never will be."

"No, true, but living world affairs are," Koenma replied. "And an S class demon frequently appearing in the living world and upsetting people and breaking things is very much my business."

"…Just open a breach and let me go."

Koenma nodded.

"I intend to," he said. "But I would appreciate it if you would stop visiting the living world. And I would appreciate it if you would at least turn yourself over to the SDF when they start looking for you rather than running from them and wasting their time and your own."

Hiei smirked.

"I couldn't turn myself over to them," he said slowly and deliberately. "They weren't in the living world when I got there last night. I believe they were with you. And Yusuke Urameshi."

Koenma's face flickered slightly, but he otherwise managed to stay remarkably calm and stoic despite Hiei's remark: but Hiei knew that it was his training as a diplomat that kept his emotion from his face and that, underneath his mask of cool, the little brat was no doubt squirming and panicking.

"This morning you ran away from the SDF when they tried to take you back here," Koenma said slowly. "They chased you around the city for almost an hour before they eventually caught up to you."

"Hn, what a waste of time," Hiei said, still smirking confidently.

"Yes, it was a waste of time," Koenma agreed. "For both of us."

"I agree," Hiei said. "But if you were to do what Yusuke asked you to, I wouldn't need to keep your elite troopers from more pressing matters. If you just took down the Kakai Barrier, I would be able to return to demon world by myself."

Koenma said nothing, but again Hiei saw a slightly flicker of discomfort pass over his features as his brow tightened and his nose twitched.

"Maybe you enjoy seeing me here," Hiei added.

"No more than you enjoy being here," Koenma flatly replied. "Now I'm going to–"

He stopped, turning to the console on his desk as it began beeping. He stared at it for a long time before eventually pushing a button to stop the noise.

"I'm busy, can it wait?" he said.

"Not really, Sir," a voice answered him. "There's someone here to see you urgently."

"Well you'll have to tell whoever it is to wait," Koenma said sharply. "I'm with Hiei right now."

"I know Sir, but that's why this is urgent, it concerns Hiei."

Koenma glanced across the room at Hiei as though he expected Hiei to know why there might be someone demanding to see him in spirit world.

"Who is it?" Koenma asked, squinting down at the console critically.

"It's Botan, Sir."

Koenma turned back to Hiei and gave him a glare that almost made Hiei think he looked intimidating.

"She shouldn't be here right now," he said, his tone flat and quiet, as though he was musing aloud more than addressing the intercom on his desk.

"She asked to come through to speak with you and Hiei, Sir."

"Fine. Send her in."

Koenma turned fully towards Hiei again and gave him an almost accusing look.

"Do you see the problems you cause with your refusal to cooperate?" he asked.

"Problems?" Hiei echoed. "Hn, the only problem I can see is the problem of you delaying my return to demon world."

Koenma sighed and shook his head. The doors to the office opened then and an ogre entered, followed closely by Botan, who was – to Hiei's surprise – still dressed as a ferry girl. He had thought that she would have been in her human body and in the living world already, but apparently not. Perhaps then that was why Koenma was annoyed, he decided: Hiei's arrival and Botan's request to see him had delayed her transition into her human life.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you, Sir," she said quietly to Koenma, sidling up to his desk as the ogre left the room again. "I was just curious about Hiei returning here. Again."

"Don't worry yourself about it, Botan," Koenma assured her. "He'll be back in demon world shortly."

"I heard that he was taken here from the living world," she said. "Again."

"He was," Koenma confirmed. "But please don't worry about it. The SDF are remaining stationed in the living world for now, and they will capture him if he appears there again. You don't have to worry about him bothering you."

Botan nodded at him before turning to look across the room at Hiei, who was still standing by the doors at the back of Koenma's office, keen to make a quick exit as soon as he was finished tormenting the prince.

"I don't understand why you keep coming back here," she said to him. "You told me yesterday that you didn't want to be here and that you were only here by accident, so why are you back again already?"

Hiei opened his mouth to answer her but he was cut off by Koenma.

"Please Botan, don't worry about this," he said. "I have it under control. I'm sending him back to demon world and he won't bother you again."

"…He appeared in my bedroom last night," she replied, turning to Koenma.

"…What?" Koenma echoed in a low voice.

"Last night, I came back to my room after having a bath and he was just standing there right in the middle of my room," she said.

Koenma turned to Hiei and gave him a questioning look.

"What?" Hiei grunted.

"Were you in Botan's bedroom last night?" Koenma asked.

"Why would I be?" Hiei asked, smirking at Botan as he spoke.

She started to blush and his smirk widened.

"You just appeared there!" she snapped indignantly. "I opened the door and there you were! Just standing there like you had a right to be there!"

"Well don't worry about it, it won't happen again," Koenma said.

"But Lord Koenma, I had just come out of the bath!" she wailed.

"You don't have to call me "Lord" Koenma any more, Botan," he said quietly.

Hiei's smirk dropped into a scowl of disgust and he felt his anger flare. Botan seemed to still be a ferry girl but apparently her intentions were unchanged with regards to her boss.

"I'm sorry Sir, I keep forgetting," she whispered back.

"You don't have to call me "Sir" either," he whispered.

Hiei wondered if they thought that he would not be able to hear them when he had a heightened sense of hearing and he was standing only a few feet away from them. How idiotic, he thought to himself.

"It just feels strange not to call you by a title," Botan whispered.

"You could call me "dear"," Koenma offered. "That sounds a bit like "Sir"."

"Well I suppose you're right, it–"

"Enough!"

Koenma and Botan both jerked back at Hiei's sudden and exceptionally loud outburst.

"This is all bullshit!" he added. "I shouldn't have to be subjected to this crap! Let me out of here, I want to go home."

Hiei did not bother adding that by home he actually meant back to the paradise reality and life with Botan in the living world: and in the mean time he was fine with just getting back to demon world, as Kuwabara and Shuichi had reminded him that the living world of his own reality was detestable and now Koenma and Botan were reminding him that the spirit world of his reality was no better.

"That's fine, I intend to send you back to demon world where you belong, Hiei," Koenma said.

"Good," Hiei growled back.

Koenma nodded and Hiei knew that he ought to say no more, he knew that the diplomatic thing to do would be to leave silently, he knew that arguing any further with the Koenma and Botan of his own reality was a really bad decision, but his anger had overtaken his common sense, and so he continued.

"I'm going back to a place where you idiots understand your places a little better. A place where you're still a small child but you at least keep your nose out of my life and demon world politics and where you married me and gave me children like you were supposed to," he said, addressing each of them in turn.

Koenma sighed, rubbing his fingers at his temples as though he was growing impatient of listening to Hiei, but Botan looked suddenly irate.

"Shut-up, Hiei!" she snapped, surprising both Koenma and Hiei with her tone. "I'm sick of this! You can't keep saying such stupid things all the time! I'm not married to you, I never have been, and I never would marry you – I hate you! Or did you forget that? Again? You don't even know me, so why do you keep talking like this? If you did know me, you would know that I am going to be Lord Koenma's wife and the mother of his children, and you coming in here and talking like that only upsets us both and makes you look stupid!"

"You're never going to be happy here!" Hiei argued back, the last semblance of logic leaving him entirely. "You'll never be happy until you marry me, you idiot!"

"You always insult me!" she shouted. "You even did it again there when you said that I should marry you! If you truly think so little of me then why would you want to marry me?"

"Because neither of us are happy under any circumstances except for when we're together! I know because I've seen it, over and over!"

"You're wrong! I'm happy here with Lord Koenma! I'm going to live as his wife and we're going to have a family and we'll have a son and I'm going to call him Monzan."

Hiei lost all of his senses for a brief instant, and when he recovered them he was holding the remains of a chair in his hands, the splinters around him apparently the result of where he had broken it against a wall. He looked over at Koenma's desk and found the prince suddenly on his feet, holding Botan in his arms protectively as she clung onto him and peered over fearfully at Hiei.

"Do what you want," Hiei spat, throwing down the broken chair. "Marry him or don't, I don't care, but you are not calling his son Monzan, because Monzan is the name of my son."

Botan yelped indignantly, her fear turning into anger once more.

"You're only saying that because I just said that I wanted to name my son Monzan!" she cried. "You don't even understand what you're saying!"

"My son is called Monzan, don't you dare tarnish his name by giving it that bastard's offspring!" Hiei shouted back.

"Monzan is a very important–"

"Stop it, both of you!" Koenma interjected. "Botan, this is counter-productive and pointless and Hiei it's not your concern what Botan and I do."

"When you take the name of my son and misuse it like that, it damn well is my business," Hiei snarled back.

"…Okay…" Koenma said, quirking an eyebrow at him as though he was talking like a madman. "But for the record, if it makes you feel any better, I would never call a son of mine Monzan. I would name him after me, just like my father did with me. And Monzan is an old-fashioned name anyway, I don't even like it."

"But Sir, that name is very important to me!" Botan wailed.

"It's a silly name, Botan," Koenma told her calmly.

"It's not silly, it's very important!" Botan argued.

"It's silly."

"It's not silly, you are," Hiei said sternly, jabbing a finger at Koenma as he spoke. "Monzan Kadokura was an honourable warrior, and the name is given to all honourable warriors who rise to greatness, and that's why my son is called Monzan, because he's an honourable warrior who will rise to greatness, so fuck you!"

Koenma snorted and rolled his eyes.

"This is getting beyond ridiculous," he said.

"…What?" Botan said softly.

Koenma looked down at her and started to repeat himself but stopped as she pushed him away and wriggled out of his hold. Her eyes were fixed on Hiei, who in turn watched her curiously as she walked around Koenma's desk and started towards him.

"How could you know that?" she asked him quietly. "How could you possibly know that? I've never told anyone about that but Lord Koenma…"

"I know that because our son is called Monzan, and that's why," Hiei answered her. "Monzan isn't the name of the son you have with that idiot or with anyone else, Monzan is the name of the son that you have with me."

She slowly shook her head.

"It's not possible," she said.

"Yes it is," Koenma said. "He used his jagan eye and read your mind to find out who Monzan was."

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Hiei snapped at him.

"This is all just wasting time for all of us," Koenma pointed out. "Hiei, you can keep the name Monzan, you're welcome to it. I would never name any son of mine Monzan."

"But I want to name my first son Monzan," Botan said, glaring at him in angered determination. "That's the only thing I've ever wanted for myself. I've never wished or wanted for anything that I couldn't have as a ferry girl but this one thing. You can't deny me it."

"Botan, it's not a big deal," Koenma said.

"It's a huge deal!" she argued.

"No, it's really not. First of all, I will only have one son, and his name definitely won't be Monzan, and secondly, you won't even be his mother, so this is a pointless discussion."

Botan's face dropped and Hiei could understand why: what Koenma had just said made absolutely no sense.

"Wh-what?" Botan asked.

Koenma frowned at her.

"Which part do you need me to repeat?" he asked.

"Well first of all, how about the part where you said that you intend to have a child with another woman?" she replied.

He nodded.

"Yes," he said. "But you already knew that."

"What?" Hiei and Botan both said.

Koenma glanced back and forth between them before settling his eyes on Botan.

"I'm the future ruler of spirit world, Botan," he said. "You can only have children during your human trial, and any heir of mine can't be half-human. I'll have my son with one of the elders like my father did with me."

"If I'm not going to be the mother of your son then why the hell am I doing all of this?" Botan asked.

Koenma faltered slightly, apparently as taken aback by her tone and language as Hiei was.

"Because we want to be together as lovers," he said.

"You want me as a lover?" she asked.

"Of course I do!"

"But not enough that you want me to be the mother of your children?"

"Child, I will only have one child, and no, you can't be the mother of that child."

"Isn't that incredibly selfish of you?"

"Excuse me?"

"Maybe I wanted to have children!"

"You'll help me raise my son."

"Yes, your son, not our son!"

"Of course not our son!"

Botan made to answer him but stopped, apparently too close to tears to talk. She visibly tried to hold back her emotions for several seconds before they eventually overcame her and tears flooded her eyes.

"This isn't fair," she sobbed. "I only went through all of this because I thought that we were going to be together and have a family."

"We will be together and we will have a family," Koenma replied. "I don't need to sire an heir until my father passes control of spirit world over to me, so it may not be for a few more centuries yet but we–"

"You never explained this to me before!" Botan cut him off. "I don't know if I want to carry on with this if I can't have children! It's always been something I thought I could never have and this gave me hope! Why don't you want to have children with me? Even Hiei wants to have children with me, and he hates me!"

Koenma turned to Hiei sharply, and despite thinking that he was enjoying the moment, Hiei suddenly felt awkward and wished that he had left for demon world already. Despite the ongoing argument between Koenma and Botan clearly being in Hiei's own favour, he mostly just pitied Botan that she had condemned herself to a life that she did not want, and all because of Koenma and his clever words.

Well, Hiei thought to himself, that just proved beyond all doubt that clever words were not always the right answer. He would never have fooled her into marrying him with deception, he would have just been blunt with her and they both would have known exactly where they stood with each other.

"This is getting complicated," Koenma said quietly. "And you're being irrational. Hiei, you don't have to wait to be dismissed, you can leave any time. There's a breach open on the other side of the main doors, I'm sure you know your way there by now."

"You trust me to walk around spirit world unsupervised?" Hiei asked.

"…Just get out of my sight, Hiei," Koenma replied darkly.

Hiei hesitated, the look on Koenma's face surprising him. He then turned to Botan, finding her still staring at Koenma expectantly. She was shedding tears but not exactly crying, and he suspected that she was as much frustrated as she was upset. He did not like to see her suffering like that, least of all when he knew the solution to her problem: clearly she needed to just marry him like she had done in the paradise reality.

"Fine," he eventually said, turning and moving towards the doors.

"Sit down Botan," he heard Koenma say as he left the office.

The idiot was probably about to fool her into something else with his clever – and deceptive – words, Hiei thought. Damn those diplomats and their lies. Hiei was glad that he was going back to demon world, because there was less sleight of hand trickery there – most disputes were simply laid out in the open and settled with good and honest physical violence – and once he was there Mukuro would send him away again, and this time she would hopefully send him to the right place.

* * *

Hiei was more angered than he would ever outwardly admit when he got back to Mukuro's fortress and found that she was not there. Nobody would tell him where she was, and he assumed that she was either making one of her rare trips to the frontline of the fighting or she was still on her way back from spirit world – he was assuming that she had gone to meet with Koenma herself after Yusuke about the issue of the Kakai Barrier.

With nothing else to do, Hiei had systematically prepared himself for a potentially long and complicated visit to an unwanted reality in the off-chance that Mukuro got it wrong again by gorging himself on as much food as he could lay his hands on and sleeping. After several hours of feasting and resting, Mukuro had still not returned, and Hiei quickly became bored. He became so bored that he retrieved the ball of paper from his pocket and opened it out onto the desk in Mukuro's office, sitting down in her chair to study it at length.

At first it just angered him. It was just a piece of nonsense concocted by the mentally unstable idiot who thought he was Kurama, after all. And it was really just a list of the places he had visited weighed up against the people he had noticed changes in, and it reminded him that, of course, Kuwabara was unchanged in every instance except for the paradise scenario, where he had been just like his old self and, surprisingly, far more bearable for it.

Thinking about what had happened in Koenma's office earlier that day, Hiei added another name to the top of the page: Monzan. Monzan had, of course, only existed in the paradise reality, but Monzan was, along with Botan, the main reason that Hiei was trying so hard to escape his own reality and so he felt that adding him was important.

It was not just people that had differed in the various realities, Hiei thought to himself, certain places had differed too. The old lady's temple had been in ruins except for in realities where Yukina was still in the living world. He did not know if that was significant or not, but he added the temple in there anyway, noting where it had been ruined and where it had not, making assumptions on its condition in the realities he had been unable to check. And he decided to add something else that was significant to the chart: the tree-house. It had been absent in every reality apart from the paradise reality, which probably made sense because the house had been built for Hiei and Botan to live in, and only in the paradise reality did they live together.

Hiei paused, tapping his pen against the page. He felt as though he was missing something somewhere, fragments of the conversation he had shared with Kurama on the roof of the old lady's temple in the paradise reality flitting through his mind. He was sure that Kurama had said something quite specific about why, how or maybe just when the tree-house had appeared, and he wondered if there was something more there, some sort of deeper clue to finding his way back to paradise.

If he could not ever get back to paradise, Hiei thought, he might have to follow Shuichi's plan and try to make it happen in his own reality, so key things his own reality lacked were important to note.

But it was, of course, impossible to change what had already happened in his own dimension and too much time had passed with too many other unfixable things happening in between since his own reality had diverged from the paradise reality some ten years previously.

Hiei sighed and threw down his pen – neither planning ahead nor strategic thinking had ever been strong points for him.

"Not sulking again, are you Hiei?"

Hiei growled quietly, inwardly cursing the fact that Mukuro always seemed to walk in on him when he had just done something seemingly petulant that furthered her opinion of him as a child – he wondered if she treated him with any more respect in the paradise reality, where she knew him as a father.

"You've been gone a long time," he said, balling up the paper in front of him and stuffing it into his pocket again. "You're little trick didn't work, I went to a reality at war again, you need to try again."

"What sort of reality was it?" she asked him. "Apart from the war, was it very like this one?"

"I was you ambassador and the fighting was a lot closer to us," he frankly replied.

"Well I suppose we would be in deeper shit if you were in charge of diplomacy around here," she muttered. "Maybe now you appreciate that it's a much harder job than it looks?"

"Hn, it seemed easy enough to me."

"Obviously you weren't there long enough to have to do any work."

"You'd be surprised."

Mukuro gave him an expectant look, but Hiei said no more. He was just eager to get out of the "norm" reality, as Shuichi had called it.

"Are you ready to go again?" she asked when he did not answer her after several seconds.

"Of course," he replied. "This time make sure you hit me as hard as you can."

"You might regret those words, Hiei," Mukuro said.

"I have no…" Hiei began. "I mean I have few regrets. Now stop stalling and hit me."

Mukuro nodded and began charging her attack. He hoped that she would take his request seriously and hit him harder, because he was determined that he was going to get back to paradise and stay there: he was only too aware that the last few wounds she had given him had healed far too quickly and far too easily, and none of them would have sustained his existence in paradise for any length of time.

"Are we remembering what our task is?" she asked him as the glow between her hands brightened.

"Stop speaking to me like I'm a child," Hiei flatly answered.

"Because you've had five attempts at this – not including that first one – and I'm only trying this five times more," she reminded him. "This is try number six Hiei, if this one fails, you only have four chances left."

"Just shut-up and get on with it."

"Fine!"

Mukuro chopped her hands down through the air in a cross motion, and an instant later a blast of energy hit Hiei in the abdomen. He cursed her name as it burned and he felt himself bleeding almost instantly – she had apparently stayed true to her word and hit him harder this time, as he was hurting more than he ever had from the attack. He was thrown backwards and through a wall, falling to the yard outside where he landed hard on his back.

"Shit…" he groaned as the dust settled around him.

His wound was quite painful this time – not quite crippling, but almost – and he could still feel blood leaking down his sides. He tried to sit up, but the damage to his gut was too great and so he was forced to roll over and bend his legs against the ground to lift himself up onto his knees. Hiei lifted his head and took a long, slow look around the yard.

Slowly, he started to smile.

The border patrol road was open and well-worn, and in the distance he could see a vehicle approaching, and an active border patrol meant no Kakai Barrier. The yard was once more swarming with bodies and there was no visible sign of conflict on the horizon.

And best of all, Hiei could see that bastard Hitoshi running towards him calling out his name.

He was finally back in paradise.

"Hiei, are you alright?" Hitoshi asked, staggering to a halt at his side and glancing back and forth between Hiei and the hole in the wall he had fallen out of. "That was some fall, what happened? It looked like you came from your own chambers – were you lighting your farts again? Did you get a really propellant one?"

"You cocky, unfunny, fucking son of a bitch," Hiei said, standing up slowly. "I hate you and everything about you."

Hitoshi's smile faltered slightly and he took a wary step back.

"And yet I've never been so glad to see you," Hiei added, smiling.

"…Took a blow to the head, huh Hiei?" the ambassador asked, his eyebrows twisting sceptically.

"Tell Mukuro I'm going home," he said.

"Home?" Hitoshi echoed. "But you're already here…?"

"To my family, you idiot."

"Your what?"

Hiei sighed and shook his head. For a clever bastard Hitoshi was certainly behaving like an idiot. It then briefly occurred to Hiei that he should have added Hitoshi to that chart that Shuichi made, since he was someone quite influential to the events in the various realities Hiei had visited: but then Hiei remembered that he was back in paradise, so anything that he had left behind in the shitty "norm" reality was now of absolutely no consequence whatsoever.

And with that thought, Hiei turned and ran, taking himself to the nearest portal to return to the living world and to his family.

* * *

Hiei slowed to a leisurely walking pace as he sighted the green, green plant shop in the corner where it was supposed to be. He was dressed in his own clothes and he had a sword at his hip that made a nice sound as it rubbed against the material of his pants as he walked. The sun was shining, the skies were clear and the air felt fresher and tasted more delicious than ever. Hiei wanted to savour every moment of arriving back in the place he wanted to be – the place he was always meant to have been in – and he intended to reacquaint himself with paradise Kurama and paradise Yusuke before returning to his family. He had grown more anxious to be reunited with Kurama and Yusuke in their paradise forms after having caught a glimpse of their "norm" forms and greatly disliking what he had seen.

"Hiei!"

Hiei slowed to a halt, looking up at the cheerful woman grinning at him from behind a giant cactus. It was that woman who always worked in the plant shop with Kurama – and again Hiei found himself thinking that he ought to add her name to the chart Shuichi had made, and again he promptly thought himself ridiculous for even considering such a thing – and it occurred to him that he could not remember her name, but yet she was an important part of who paradise Kurama was.

"Tell me your name, woman," he said to her. "I'm going to make the effort to remember it."

She giggled slightly.

"Careful with the charm, Hiei!" she said playfully. "You could make a girl go weak at the knees with talk like that! It's Maya."

Hiei nodded, turning from her as Kurama walked over to join them. Before he even spoke Hiei could already tell that he was looking at Kurama and not Shuichi, simply by the distinctly superior intelligence obvious in his eyes.

"Hiei, what a surprise to see you here today," he said. "Are you joining us for dinner tonight?"

Hiei grinned. He did not think that he had ever grinned out of sheer joy, but the idea of one of Yukina's home-cooked dinners served to him and his friends and family like they were meant to be made him grin like an idiot.

"…I'll take that as a yes…" Kurama said quietly, his eyebrows drawing together into a small frown.

Keen not to alert Kurama to the fact that he was the wrong Hiei, Hiei decided to move on. He knew that Kurama would figure it out just as he had before, but he wanted to delay that happening for as long as possible, to allow him to ease his transition back into paradise as smoothly as possible.

"I'll see you tonight," he said.

"Goodbye, Hiei!" Maya called after him as he walked on.

Hiei walked all the way through the city, ignoring the odd looks he earned himself. His shirt was black, so the blood staining into it was not too obvious, but he was aware that the shirt was sticking to his wound and that he was probably occasionally dripping blood, which was probably a worrying sight for the pathetic humans around him. But their odd looks could not dampen his spirits – nothing could – as he made his way towards Yukimura Restaurant.

When he got to Yukimura Restaurant Hiei could immediately see a difference between the paradise version and the restaurant of his own reality: every table inside the restaurant was full and there were even additional tables on the street outside that were literally crammed with people. There was a hoard of people lining the counter inside and Hiei could just make out three figures in white coats and hats rushing around behind the counter. Not wishing to put himself into such a crowded place – especially when the crowd consisted entirely of humans – Hiei contented himself with watching through a window, shortly sighting Yusuke Urameshi as he was meant to be, looking like the punk kid he always had been, working alongside two middle-aged humans that Hiei assumed were Keiko's parents: though Keiko herself was nowhere to be seen.

Hiei started to walk on but stopped and again smiled in spite of himself as he spotted two familiar faces: one was Keiko, dressed far more conservatively and professionally than she had been in any other reality Hiei had seen her in including his own, and the other was Kuwabara's sister. They were both so busy talking and laughing between themselves that they did not notice Hiei – though he was just as happy to be ignored, as he had nothing to say to them anyway. Keiko was carrying a briefcase and apparently did not work at the restaurant like she did in Hiei's own reality, presumably because Yusuke worked there now.

Everything was as it should be, Hiei thought.

He carried on, this time breaking into a run as he was finished perusing the city and he intended to go straight up to the old lady's temple to check on Yukina before finally going home to be with his wife and son. He hoped that other Hiei had not been interfering with either of them while he had been gone. If he found out that he had, he would kill him. If he ever managed to find him or even figure out where he was now.

Hiei's run to the temple was cut short however as he reached the road leading out of the city and noticed something strange on the path ahead of him: it was Yukina, and she was riding a bicycle away from the city.

Something seemed odd about what he was seeing, but Hiei could not quite define what it was.

He slowed his pace until he caught up with Yukina, adjusting his pace again to travel alongside her.

"Yukina," he said.

She yelped and almost fell off of the bicycle in shock. Hiei stumbled to a halt and grabbed the handlebars of the contraption to hold her steady as her feet flailed slightly before finding the ground.

"Oh, you frightened me," she gasped.

"Are you alright?" he asked her.

She nodded, but Hiei was not convinced: she had yet to look him in the eye.

"Thank you very much," she said, placing her hands onto the handlebars again.

Hiei removed his hands, watching her expectantly.

"D-do you have any news from demon world for me?" she asked, briefly looking him in the eye before looking down at the ground again.

Hiei tilted his head slightly: something was definitely awry. What had that other Hiei been doing? If that bastard had fucked up paradise, Hiei would find him and kill him, no matter how difficult it was. Obviously the idiot had said something upsetting to Yukina to make her so nervous around him now. This was not the same happy, confident Yukina that Hiei remembered from paradise, rather this was the sort of semi-contented and reserved Yukina from those other half-assed realities where she was in the living world but not in paradise.

"No," he said.

"Oh," she said, nodding her head. "Well thank you anyway, Mister Hiei, I still appreciate your help."

"…"Mister" Hiei?" Hiei muttered.

She had dropped the "Mister" from his name in the paradise reality, and it sounded strange to him to hear her use it again.

"I was just on my way back to the temple," she continued. "I'm cooking dinner for everyone tonight. Will you join us?"

"Yes, definitely," Hiei immediately answered.

"Oh, how wonderful."

Hiei was almost angry when Yukina's tone made it sound as though she thought him joining them for dinner was anything but wonderful.

"I'll be sure to set an extra place for you," she added. "Kazuma is hoping to finish work a little earlier tonight so that he can join us too, but I'm not so sure that he'll manage, he's been working such long hours lately."

"…Oh no…" Hiei sighed.

That was wrong. Kuwabara was not meant to be working long hours because this was paradise, and he did not do that stupid "apprentice" job in paradise.

"Yukina?" he said.

"Yes, Mister Hiei?" she responded.

"If Kuwabara is working long hours, who takes Monzan to kindergarten every day?"

Hiei suspected that he would not like Yukina's answer long before she gave it, the frown that appeared on her face when he said his son's name doing little to ease his concerns.

"I-I'm sorry, I'm not sure that I understand," she said softly. "Who is Monzan?"

Hiei sighed quietly.

"My son," he said.

"You have a son?" she echoed, her eyebrows shooting upwards in evident disbelief.

"Yes," he replied.

"My goodness! I had no idea!"

Hiei hung his head, touching a hand to his chest experimentally, and promptly feeling like an idiot for not having done so much sooner: there were two hiruiseki concealed beneath his shirt. He looked down at his left hand and saw no trace of a wedding ring, his heart sinking.

"Where's Botan this time?" he asked, mostly speaking to himself as he was wondering what sort of reality this was and how it had come about, especially as it seemed quite close to paradise.

"She's working," Yukina answered him. "But she'll be coming to dinner tonight too – unless she, um, changes her mind about the, um, well…"

Hiei sighed heavily and ran off. Yukina was obviously uncomfortable around him because she still saw him as a stranger rather than the brother she knew him as in paradise. Not wishing to put her through any more discomfort but equally lacking the patience to explain himself to her Hiei simply ran away from her, taking himself back to the old lady's temple where straight away he saw two things that he did not like: there was no sign of his tree-house in the woods nearby and, although the temple was undamaged and tidy, it looked vaguely uncared for, the paint chipping from the woodwork and the gardens a little messy.

"This isn't paradise," he groaned. "But it's the closest I've seen so far…"

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** It's not paradise, but damn it's close – Hiei has a complete crisis of conscience when he finds himself in a reality that is but the smallest margin away from being the one he had first visited. He cannot decide whether he should stay and make the change or go back to his own reality and take a chance on finding paradise again: but before he can make up his mind he starts to notice something quite peculiar about Kuwabara and Yukina that captures his interest. **Chapter 17 – Maternal Approval**


	17. Maternal Approval

**A/N:** **Again, apologies for potentially bad portrayals of Koenma and Mukuro – but it does all have a point, I promise!**

 **Recap:** In his own reality, Hiei discovered that Koenma intends to take Botan as a lover only and would not have children with her, which upset Botan. He considered Shuichi's chart a little more and amended it slightly but discarded it when Mukuro sent him to another reality, which at first seemed like paradise, but he realised it wasn't so when he met Yukina and realised that she did not know he is her brother in this reality.

* * *

 **Chapter 17: Maternal Approval**

Hiei sat down where he stood. There was no point in bothering to find a better place to sit, he decided, since he was alone anyway. He started looking for Botan, focusing on locating her by her spirit energy, but after several minutes he still could not find her. He grew frustrated but assured himself that she could not be too far away as Yukina had said that she was coming to the temple for dinner, so he would see her then if not before.

Out of curiosity and mild desperation, Hiei sought out Kuwabara. The idiot was in that horrible suit, he had shaved hair again and that stupid little beard and he was working in that building at the same damn desk he did in the "norm" reality.

Hiei stood up, closed his jagan eye and opened his own eyes, his purpose now clear. This was not paradise, but only because Kuwabara was still that "apprentice" idiot, so obviously the shortfall in this reality was Kuwabara's fault.

Hiei was not really sure why he was not married to Botan, Monzan did not exist and Yukina was not more forthcoming – he supposed that she was just indifferent towards him because he had not told her that he was her brother. He mostly still wondered how his paradise self had gone about such an onerous task, as it was something that he had never wanted to do and never thought that he would. Perhaps if he did tell her she would change somehow – though he had to wonder how her knowing that he was her brother could possibly change her. Kuwabara was an idiot and deserved to be stuck in that stupid job, though Hiei would need him to change eventually so that he could take Monzan to kindergarten when the time came, which it most assuredly would if Hiei married Botan like he was meant to.

Hiei lifted up his shirt and inspected his wound. It was deeper and more extensive than any previous hit he had taken from the Dividing Realities, looking about twice as bad as the wound that had sent him to paradise: which, he reasoned, meant that he would remain where he was for four days if he did nothing to heal or worsen the wound. He hoped that four days was long enough to figure out what had gone wrong between him and Botan and to find a way to fix it, because he was beginning to think that this might be his best shot at finding paradise. He did not agree with Shuichi entirely – there was, after all, no possible way that his own reality could ever become anything remotely as good as the paradise reality – but perhaps Shuichi's logic could be applied to this near-perfect reality. And this reality had a slight bonus as far as Hiei was concerned: as Monzan had not been born yet, he would be able to experience that moment for himself.

And so Hiei decided to stay where he was. Everything else was perfect, and just a few small changes would fix the remaining errors.

He decided that he would forgive Kuwabara for his incompetence and took himself into the woods, finding a tree nearby where his house was supposed to be and settling himself down for a nap while he waited for the others to arrive.

He was looking forward to meeting a Botan who had no reason to hate him this time.

* * *

Hiei woke up to the sensation of something cold and wet pressing against his face. His eyes snapped open and instantly locked onto Yusuke, who was standing on the branch he was lying on, crouched over him, a thick pen in one hand and an insolent grin on his face and vague look of guilt in his eyes.

"Hey, you're awake!" he said.

"Yes, I am," Hiei flatly replied, sitting up and snatching the pen from him. "What have you done to my face?"

Hiei closed his fist around the pen and snapped it in half before dropping it to the ground, only to discover that his actions had probably not been for the best, as he was left with a black stain in the palm of his hand where the ink had leaked into his skin.

"We all got here half an hour ago, Yukina is making us wait for you to wake up before she serves dinner," Yusuke said, ignoring Hiei's question. "So come on, let's get inside and eat already!"

Hiei slowly stood up, wiping a hand at the side of his face. He looked down at his fingers, seeing black smudges, before looking up at Yusuke accusingly.

"I was trying to give you a little hamster face, but I only got the whiskers on one side done before you woke up," Yusuke blurted out, before laughing and leaping down out of the tree.

"Still an idiot," Hiei grumbled, wiping his face in his shirt.

But better to have him as an idiot than the Raizen clone he had become in Hiei's own reality, he thought silently as he hopped down after him.

"So what are you doing here anyway?" Yusuke asked him as he joined him. "You hardly ever come here any more. You do know that Kuwabara might be coming by later on and Botan's already here, right?"

"Botan's here?" Hiei blurted out. "I didn't sense–"

Hiei stopped himself eying Yusuke over warily. Something about the way he had referred to Botan was not settling well with Hiei, and it only added to the mounting idea that this reality was going to turn into something ugly very quickly.

"Things are cool between you two now though, right?" Yusuke asked him, looking a little worried himself. "It's been a long time, and it's all past now, right?"

Hiei did not like the direction that their conversation seemed to be heading in.

"You have seen Botan at least once since it all, y'know, went bad, right?" Yusuke asked.

"I don't know," Hiei slowly replied.

"You've seen her since she… Changed, right?"

"Changed?"

Hiei was still watching Yusuke expectant of an answer, but Yusuke had become distracted be Keiko, who was trying to show him a photograph of something as they entered the temple. She led him through to the living room and Hiei followed, finding the room filled with almost everyone he had expected to find there: Yusuke, Keiko, Kurama, Maya, Yukina, Kuwabara's sister and some other woman Hiei had never seen before.

"Hiei?"

Hiei tensed at the sound of Botan's voice, his head flicking about trying to locate the source of it: but Botan was nowhere to be seen.

"What's he doing here?" he heard her whisper to someone. "I didn't know he was going to be here tonight."

"Oh I'm so sorry Botan!" Yukina said. "I invited Mister Hiei to join us. I didn't mean to upset you."

"No, it's fine," Botan replied in a tone that said she was clearly not fine about Hiei being there. "I don't have a problem with Hiei being here tonight."

"You just said that you did, idiot," Yusuke scoffed.

"Yusuke!" Keiko hissed, punching him in the arm.

"What?" he echoed, shrugging innocently.

"I don't have a problem!" Botan said insistently. "But maybe Hiei does. Maybe he doesn't want to be sat at the same table as something as worthless as me."

There was movement by one end of the room and Hiei turned towards it, suddenly finding himself looking at a pair or scorned pink eyes glaring back at him. Her eyes were still the same, but nothing else about Botan was physically recognisable to him: her powder blue hair was cut short and sat thin, flat and limply at the sides of her face, she was dressed incredibly plainly in what was clearly either second-hand or very old clothing she had worn too often and she was no longer the slender, leggy beauty he had struggled to keep his hands off of in other realities.

"What the hell happened?" he blurted out before he could stop himself. "Did you eat Botan?"

"What?" she snapped back, her eyes flashing angrily.

"You're the size of a human car, what the hell happened to you?" he asked, waving a hand at her substantially increased girth.

"How dare you?" she cried.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Yusuke said, quickly stepping between them both. "Let's not do this. Let's just all sit down and have a nice meal like old times, yeah?"

"Which old times would those be?" Botan asked sarcastically. "The old times when I was still a ferry girl or the old times when I was left alone in this world with nothing to my name?"

"Botan, come on," Yusuke said quietly. "Let's just have dinner, yeah?"

"Hn, she looks like she already ate for all of us," Hiei grunted.

"You selfish meanie!" Botan snapped at him. "How dare you be so judgemental about my physical appearance? I never once thought any less of you after you were so badly scarred from the rock monster! I never gave up on you!"

Hiei narrowed his eyes slightly: so in this reality he had saved her from the rock monster and had all of his scarring healed. Where then, he wondered, had the difference happened to stop this reality from becoming paradise?

"Come on Botan, it's been a long time and it's over now," Yusuke said.

"He called me fat!" Botan said to him. "He hasn't seen me in years and all he can say is how fat I've become!"

"I'm sure he meant no offence," Kurama said. "Right, Hiei?"

Kurama glared at Hiei in a way that almost made him flinch fearfully.

"I'm surprised to see Botan like this," he said frankly.

He was surprised to see her as she was, but she was still Botan and she could easily lose weight again, he reminded himself.

"I'm surprised to see you like this, Hiei," Botan said to him. "I didn't think you would ever come to one of our dinners again."

"I wanted to see everyone again," Hiei replied.

"Except fatty me, right?" she said, lowering her eyes to the ground.

"I'm glad to see you here, Botan," he said.

She lifted her eyes to his again and made as though she was about to answer him but stopped before she made a sound.

"Okay, why don't we all just go and sit down and enjoy this dinner!" Yusuke said. "It smells great, Yukina!"

Yukina nodded her head at him but Hiei could not help but notice that she still seemed distant somehow. He sensed that Botan and Kuwabara were not the only ones falling massively short of being their paradise selves, but he decided not to probe the matter that night, instead he would just observe how the others all interacted throughout the meal in silence – nobody would be suspicious of that since he was usually silent, and Hiei was still keen not to alert Kurama to who he really was, even though this Kurama was not the same one who had figured him out in the paradise reality. Everyone made their way to the dining room and began sitting around the table in a mass of bodies, amongst which Hiei somehow found himself grabbing a hand at the same chair Botan did.

They both stopped and their heads snapped up, their eyes meeting.

"I-I'm sorry," Botan said after a brief silence.

She retracted her hand and Hiei pulled out the chair. He had intended to just sit into it, but something about the look on Botan's face made him change his mind. He nodded his head at her and indicated that she should sit before turning and sitting himself into the chair next to her. She watched him with wide eyes but slowly did sit down, apparently surprised at his gesture – not that he could really blame her, since he doubted that even paradise Hiei would have done something so gracious for her.

"Thank you," she whispered.

He nodded at her and she turned to look directly across the table, where she was facing Keiko. They began talking about something that Hiei did not bother listening to, instead stealing furtive glances at Botan's profile when he thought that she was the most distracted and the least likely to notice. She was quite fat, he thought darkly, and it made her look significantly different: but she still had that sweet voice, those delicate fingers that could do the most wonderful things and that smile that was wonderfully infectious. She was not paradise Botan and Hiei was not in paradise: but a quick look around the table at smiling and contented Keiko, relaxed and charismatic Yusuke, Kurama in the body of Shuichi and Maya once more part of the group told him that it was close. There was no war in demon world, no Kakai Barrier, Botan was not with Koenma, Hitoshi was keeping the peace in demon world, and Yukina was free of the ice village.

It was so, so close.

Yukina and Kuwabara's sister entered the room carrying trays of food and seeing Kuwabara's sister making jokes with everyone gave Hiei another reason to think that this reality was not so bad. Yukina was free of the ice village and with her friends, and although she looked a lot better than she did in his own reality, somehow she still lacked that shimmer of joy that she had been radiating in the paradise reality. Hiei could not explain it, but it was as though something quite startling was missing from her life.

It was the same as the difference between paradise Kuwabara and non-paradise Kuwabara.

Hiei had never considered it before, but as he thought about it then he realised that, although Yukina's living arrangements were different in different realities he had visited, she, just like Kuwabara, Botan and Hiei himself, had only been truly happy in one reality.

Why was that?

Hiei knew that finding out was going to be a long and slow process, and so he was glad that his wound was severe enough to allow him the time to do so, but he was also anxious to just get to the root of the problem and fix it – because maybe it was something very simple and maybe he was only a few short hours away from initiating paradise where he was. He suspected that Mukuro was going to hold true to her promise of only sending him to four other alternate realities if he returned to his own reality, and although he had always been confident that he would get back to paradise, some of the things he had seen since his first visit there had started to make him pessimistic. He had made more decisions in his life than he could remember, and if his journeys were all based on the alternate versions of those decisions, there were more than four more possibilities facing him, and so he was in no way guaranteed a return to the reality he wanted to reach.

But this one was very close to what he wanted. Botan, Yukina and Kuwabara were different, Monzan did not exist, but everyone else and everything thing else was the same, and maybe this was as close as he would ever get. Maybe it was worth applying Shuichi's plan to this reality and staying here.

The first thing Hiei had to find out was what had gone wrong between himself and Botan. She seemed a little bitter, but she was clearly in a human body and he had rescued her from the rock monster, so he was further ahead with her in this reality than in his own. Apart from her obviously altered appearance, there was one other thing about her that was confusing Hiei: her spirit energy seemed different. She seemed weaker somehow, and he knew that it was not just because she was in a human body, because she had not been that way in the paradise reality. Obviously he had decided on something differently to how he had in the paradise reality, and it was just a matter of finding out what – though how that had affected Botan's powers was a mystery.

He supposed that Shuichi would tell him that this reality had come about from a bad decision.

Hiei was still angered that Shuichi had preached to him about the rights and wrongs of decision making, but a very small part of him could see a degree of sense in the point the human had been trying to make. Hiei did not agree that the "norm" reality was fixable – because quite clearly too much time had passed and too many parts of it were too badly broken to ever be repaired – but he could agree that the reality he was in now had the potential to become something better, and possibly just by reversing the one (or more) bad decisions the Hiei of this reality had recently made.

After all, Hiei had been to several realities and the one obvious thing throughout them all was that everyone else around him was better off in a reality where he was married to Botan: though he had yet to fully understand why that was. He understood why it made his own life better, but he was still slightly confused about why it had such an enormous impact on everyone else around him.

Dinner passed in much the same way the dinner Hiei had shared with everyone in the paradise reality had: everyone seemed to be talking all at once and about different things and yet everyone was happy and seemed to be able to understand the flow of conversation. Hiei remained silent and listened as best he could, but he heard nothing that was new: everything spoken about was either memories of things that had happened in Hiei's own reality or else recent events that were without consequence. When everyone had finished eating, Keiko and Shizuru began clearing away the dishes and Hiei could not help but notice the forlorn look that Yukina took on as she watched them.

Hiei then noticed that his sister still had a full plate of food in front of her, even though a considerable amount of time had passed and it must have gone cold, some of it having started to congeal by one side of her plate.

"It was lovely," Botan said to her.

Yukina looked up at her and smiled, but it was a slightly forced gesture.

"I just wish that Kazuma could have been here with us to enjoy it," she said.

Hiei took a long, slow, deep breath in an attempt to contain himself from telling Yukina not to waste her time worrying about Kuwabara, something he found easier to do when Botan gave him a pointed glare.

"Don't worry about it, sweetie," Botan said, turning back to Yukina. "He'll be home soon, I'm sure. You should eat."

"I want to wait for Kazuma," Yukina flatly replied.

"Well that's very nice of you," Botan said.

Hiei snorted involuntarily and suddenly found both women glaring at him.

"Some men are worth waiting for, Hiei," Botan said to him with more venom in her voice than he thought was necessary.

"Please don't fight," Yukina said softly, glancing back and forth between Hiei and Botan. "Not like this, not because of me."

"We're not fighting," Botan assured her. "Hiei never fights when it comes to me."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Hiei snapped, feeling suddenly offended – even though he was not entirely sure what she was referring to.

Botan raised her eyebrows but said nothing. He could not decide what her silence meant: whether she was honouring Yukina's request that they not fight or if she was giving him the sort of look that implied that he ought to already know the answer to the question he had just asked, and she thought him stupid for asking it. Hiei knew that look well. Mukuro gave it to him most of the time when he was responding to something she had said to him.

"I'm really glad that you both came here," Yukina said.

"I always enjoy coming here," Botan replied.

She glanced at Hiei as though she was expecting him to either answer Yukina or comment on her response, but he again kept quiet.

"Well I'm going to help clear up," she said, getting to her feet and gathering up a few plates.

"I'm going for a sleep," Yusuke said, rising from the table with a yawn. "Don't tell Keiko…"

Hiei watched as the others left the table until soon he was alone there with Yukina, and nothing was left on the table but the plate of food in front of Yukina and the plate of food that had been sitting by an empty chair since the start of the meal, presumably there for Kuwabara, Hiei thought.

"Are you still looking for your brother?" Hiei asked her, deciding to take advantage of his situation to try to find out why she was different from her paradise self.

"Of course," she replied, avoiding his eyes. "And I appreciate that you've been looking in demon world for me."

Hiei nodded slowly. He had tried to tell her before that her brother was dead and she had not accepted it, but maybe now, so many years after her first asking him to find her brother, she would accept it. He had certainly never wanted to tell Yukina that he was actually the brother she was trying to find, and he still did not know why that other Hiei from the paradise reality had told her – surely that had been a bad decision on that other Hiei's part? After all, what positive difference had it made in either of their lives?

"He's probably dead, you know," he said.

Yukina met his eyes and for the briefest of moments Hiei was sure that he saw a disapproving look on her face before she covered it with a look of mild curiosity.

"I think that he's still alive," she said.

"He was thrown from a cliff the day he was born," Hiei said slowly. "Surely that would have killed him?"

"I heard that he has grown up and become a great warrior, so obviously not," she replied, her tone ever so slightly tense.

"Maybe he died in a battle then," he said.

"I don't think so."

"Warriors fight a lot, and fighting in demon world usually leads to death."

"I have a feeling that he's still alive."

"You can't base your entire life on a "feeling"."

"I have faith in him. I believe that one day he will be in a position that he can make things right and we can be together again."

"That's ridiculous. If you want to "make things right" you have to do it yourself. You can't rely on someone else or something else magically changing the world around you just because you have "faith" in it. If you want to change things you have to do it yourself with the decisions you make and the actions you take and…"

Hiei's voice faded as he started to feel a sense of irony crawling over him. He wondered if he had been speaking to Yukina or himself, since the speech he had just given seemed to only be confirming what Shuichi had been telling him earlier that same day.

"You're right, I know," Yukina said gently. "We are all in charge of our own destinies. But sometimes when we love someone we have to believe in them. We have to believe that they will also do the right thing and change their own ways for the better."

The irony around Hiei was suddenly becoming so thick that he could taste it in the air: it was bitter and unpleasant.

"I'm going to keep looking for my brother," she continued. "I'd like it if you would keep looking too."

Hiei nodded, though he had already decided that if he was going to stay in this reality, he would soon tell Yukina that her brother was dead – even if it meant lying about finding a tomb in demon world. He felt awkward then as they sat in silence and he was actually glad when he heard Kuwabara lumbering into the room, clearly barely awake and looking as though he had been dragged through a bush backwards.

"Hey, sorry I'm so late," he said, sitting down next to Yukina. "Oh, Hiei, hey, what are you doing here?"

Hiei stared blankly at Kuwabara for a long time before he finally answered him.

"Damn you and your immunity," he growled.

He had briefly seen Kuwabara earlier when he had sought him out with his jagan eye, but seeing him in person, still looking exactly as he had in every other reality, was even more infuriating.

"…What?" Kuwabara echoed.

"I'm not the only one making bad decisions," Hiei replied in a low voice. "You're making a lot of bad decisions yourself. Everyone else manages to change except you."

"What the hell are you talking about, Hiei?" Kuwabara asked.

"You tell me," Hiei said.

Kuwabara pulled a face at him before turning to Yukina as though expecting her to answer his question.

"I kept food for you, but it's probably cold by now," she said sadly, pointing at his plate. "And I didn't start on mine yet so that we could eat together."

"Oh Yukina, you're so sweet!" he said, sounding a little more like the Kuwabara Hiei remembered.

"Let's eat," she said to him.

They both began eating and Yukina shortly stopped, pushing her plate aside.

"It's too cold now," she said with a sigh. "I can't eat it like that."

"It's delicious, my love!" Kuwabara said, stuffing food down his face in a way that even the lowest level of demon would be ashamed of.

Hiei tried to convey to him how stupid he looked by giving him his most condescending glower, but Kuwabara was too busy eating ravenously and gazing dreamily at Yukina to notice.

"You don't have to eat it," she told him. "I could make you something else."

"No, this is perfect," he said, clearly lying but also clearly determined not to upset her.

"I'm glad you came here before bedtime this time," Yukina said.

"Yeah, I worked extra hard to get home earlier today," he replied. "Hey, we might have time for some karaoke after this."

"I don't know about that."

"No? Maybe we could go for a walk?"

"It's dark outside, Kazuma."

"But the moon's out and it's so pretty. Let's go for a walk, just you and me. What do you say, baby?"

"I don't think it would be appropriate."

Yukina glanced at Hiei, giving him a brief, indefinable look before getting up from the table and swiftly leaving the room. Hiei watched her go until she was out of sight before turning his attention to Kuwabara, who was in the process of swallowing down a mouthful of what was apparently some especially unappetisingly cold food.

"She's not interested in you," Hiei told him.

He was mostly stating what he thought to be the case, but he was also partially posing his remark as a question: it was curious, after all, as Yukina had seemed much closer to Kuwabara in the paradise reality. He had not seen any specific evidence of just how intimate their relationship there was, but the fact that Yukina had given Kuwabara her hiruiseki to wear was quite significant and did suggest that they were lovers – though that was clearly not the case in any other reality Hiei had encountered them in, as Yukina was either back in the ice village or else as she was now: slightly removed and reserved and unable to give away her hiruiseki as it was still around Hiei's neck.

"It's worse than that," Kuwabara muttered into his food.

"What?" Hiei echoed, watching him expectantly.

"You wouldn't understand, Hiei," he sighed before ramming more unpleasantly cold food into his mouth and laboriously chewing his way through it.

"I think that you don't understand," Hiei answered him. "Obviously you're in love with her and she just sees you as a friend. It's quite pathetic to watch, you know."

"So then don't watch," Kuwabara replied through a mouthful of food.

"It's hard not to when you insist on continually making a buffoon of yourself in plain view of everyone else the way that you do."

"You don't understand Hiei, it's complicated."

"No it's not, it's very simple: she isn't interested in you."

"She's in love with me, actually."

Hiei narrowed his eyes sceptically, but Kuwabara remained unaffected, apparently stubbornly loyal to his belief.

"It doesn't look that way to me," Hiei said.

"Well you don't know what love looks like, so I don't care how it looks to you," Kuwabara replied. "You're the last person I would ever expect to understand anyway. Look at you: you had Botan and you let her go."

Hiei stiffened, torn between the desire to lunge across the table to tear Kuwabara a new throat to ram with food and the need to remain patient and encourage him to explain what he had just said.

"Though I guess maybe my problems with Yukina are kinda the same as what you went through with Botan, right?" Kuwabara added, a small, wry smile appearing on his face.

"I don't see how," Hiei said.

That was a nicely ambiguous answer, he silently commended himself. It was a leading statement, one that did not commit him to anything but also forced Kuwabara to explain himself.

Was that diplomacy, Hiei wondered?

"Well, Yukina and I can't be together because of that demon code thing that broke you and Botan up," Kuwabara said suddenly, snapping Hiei out of his reverie.

"Demon code?" he repeated. "What demon code?"

Kuwabara's face changed and Hiei realised that he had just lost some ground after having done such a good job of starting to convince him to talk. He was going to have to try to salvage his mistake, but he was not sure how: fancy words had never been his strong point.

"There are many demon codes," he tried. "Codes of honour, codes of conduct, codes of trade… But Yukina comes from the ice village, which is separated from the rest of demon world, so it would be unusual for her to understand any of the demon codes because of that isolation from the rest of demon world society."

Hiei felt smug again – he had never cared for negotiating, but he certainly seemed to be learning how lately. Maybe he had a natural flair for it but he had just never had the chance to exploit it before, he thought.

"Yeah, that's exactly the problem though," Kuwabara said, apparently having bought Hiei's little speech. "The ice maidens have been remote from demon world for so long that they still follow the really old demon codes. Yukina said that even though she left the ice village and demon world, she can't forget the importance of the codes she learned growing up. So I guess what she's thinking about me is like what you were thinking about Botan, only worse."

Hiei nodded, literally biting his tongue to stop himself from snapping at Kuwabara for comparing his feelings for Yukina with Hiei's feelings for Botan.

"So, you know, if you could just actually look for her brother that would be great."

Hiei frowned, all thoughts of subtlety gone from his mind.

"What does that have to do with anything?" he asked, feeling suddenly defensive.

"Well Yukina won't be with me for the same reason that you dropped Botan," Kuwabara replied. "But if you found her brother, maybe I could change her mind. If he really is dead, could you maybe get proof? Like take a picture of his grave or something."

"I had thought about proving that – wait, what? What does Yukina's brother have to do with you and Yukina?"

"She's following the old demon code?"

Hiei growled and balled his fists at his sides. He already knew that, being a reasonably powerful psychic, Kuwabara was immune to the powers of his jagan eye, so attempting to read his mind was pointless. He had to know what the idiot was talking about and unfortunately the only way he could find out was to get him to talk: but Hiei was starting to think that he might kill someone before that happened. Himself or Kuwabara, he did not really care, he just felt the need to draw blood to satisfy his frustration.

"Which demon code, idiot?" he eventually snapped.

"I don't know what you call it," Kuwabara replied with a shrug. "The one that made you ditch Botan."

"Which demon code, idiot?" Hiei asked again.

"I don't know what it's called, I'm not a demon!" Kuwabara answered.

"Which demon code, idiot?"

"The one about your mother, idiot!"

Hiei's anger vanished as he was once more overwhelmed by confusion.

"There's a demon code about my mother?" he muttered curiously.

"Not your mother," Kuwabara replied, shaking his head. "Everyone's mother."

"That makes even less sense," Hiei pointed out.

"I never said that I understood the demon codes, Hiei," Kuwabara said flatly. "Though I guess that one is a bit like a code we humans used to follow in the olden days. Kurama said that demons have held onto a lot more of those sorts of traditions than we humans have, and that was why you also took the code so seriously. I mean you must really believe in it to have dumped Botan the way you did. I really thought you were in love with her, but then you took her to demon world for like a day and when you came back everything had changed."

Hiei opened his mouth to tell Kuwabara to start making sense or risk losing a limb, but something made him stop. Something inexplicable held him back and he found his mind working through more clever words instead of letting his body react violently like he usually would do under such circumstances.

"Tradition is very important in demon world culture," he found himself saying. "That's something we demons have never understood about you humans. We watched you surrender honour and dignity in the name of a quick and easy solution to your problems, and it disgusted us. But as you are someone who prides yourself on your honour, I would think that you would respect and appreciate Yukina's wishes on this matter."

Kuwabara gave Hiei a look that was as strange and surprised as Hiei himself felt after hearing what he had just said.

"Well…" Kuwabara began slowly. "I do respect and appreciate Yukina's wishes, but it's hard not to get frustrated sometimes, because she's basically put her life on hold waiting for her brother, and you keep saying that you think he's dead, and if he is, she needs to know that so that she can get over it and move on."

"If I did get proof that her brother was dead, what difference would that make to you?" Hiei asked carefully.

"Obviously if her brother is dead, she doesn't need his approval to be with me and so we could be together," Kuwabara replied.

"I see," Hiei said, trying to contain his mounting curiosity and surprise. "Yukina wants her brother to approve of you before she accepts you as her lover?"

"Exactly. Since her mother is dead, she can't ask her mother for approval, and she said that the demon code says if a demon doesn't have a mother to approve of a pairing, the demon has to ask the next closest relative for approval. So Yukina wants her brother to approve of me before she'll accept me. I'd do anything to get that approval, I've waited so long, and I can't even look at another woman, really, Yukina is my entire world… But since you can't find her brother, I'm stuck. And so is Yukina."

Hiei nodded, leaning back in his chair pensively. He had never considered that telling his sister about their relation would change her life in any way other than perhaps to disappoint her that her brother was not the glorious hero that she hoped he would be. This certainly was an interesting and unexpected little quirk, he mused, and apparently consistent across alternate realities, as only in paradise were Yukina and Kuwabara close and both extremely happy, and only in paradise had Hiei told Yukina who he was.

In paradise, Hiei realised, that other Hiei had approved of Kuwabara being with Yukina.

What was wrong with that other Hiei, Hiei wondered? He was such a bastard and he made so many strange decisions – but, applying Shuichi's logic, as strange as that other Hiei's decisions may seem, they had all been good decisions to have brought about the paradise reality that he lived in.

And since it was only in the paradise reality that Hiei had decided to tell Yukina that he was her brother – and apparently consequently approve of her relationship with Kuwabara – Hiei would never find the paradise versions of Kuwabara or Yukina anywhere else but in the paradise reality. He had found the paradise versions of Yusuke and Kurama – and by extension of Keiko too – because they had only changed because of the war, and the war had not happened in every reality Hiei had visited, but because there was only one instance where he had made the decision that had affected Yukina and Kuwabara, there was only one instance where they were different.

Hiei, who had spent large parts of his life alone, had never before considered that decisions he made about his own life – like whether or not to reveal his true identity to his sister – could have such huge implications for others around him.

"There's just one thing I don't understand," he said, more musing aloud than addressing Kuwabara directly. "How is your not being with Yukina in any way related to why I'm not with Botan?"

"It's not related," Kuwabara answered regardless. "It's just sort of the same reason. I can't be with Yukina because I'm waiting for her to get that approval from the brother she can't find and you left Botan because you didn't get that approval from Mukuro."

"What?"

Hiei heard his chair tip over and hit the ground before he realised that he was on his feet.

"Yeah, you asked her because you don't have a mother, right?" Kuwabara added. "And she's sort of like your mother now. And she totally hated Botan, so you broke off the engagement."

"I did… I went… I was… What?!"

"It was so weird. I remember the night it happened. You and Botan were here at the temple, talking about getting a place to live in the living world, and you both seemed so happy. Then Botan said that she had heard about the demon code about maternal approval, or whatever it's called, and she asked if she should meet your mother, so you took her to demon world. You came back, and everything had changed. It was so weird, it happened so quickly."

Hiei was struggling to understand where he had made the wrong decision: he had never even heard of any "maternal approval" code before – though he supposed that, as a boy raised by a band of homeless men, he had not exactly had a complete social education – and he wondered why he had placed so much importance on it when he had learned of it in other realities. He also wondered why Mukuro had hated Botan and why it had even bothered him. He had never sensed any bad feelings between Mukuro and Botan in paradise, so what had gone wrong in this reality and how had it been initiated by one of his decisions?

How could he have come so close to reaching happiness and then lose it over something so small and insignificant?

"Fuck," he sighed, dropping his face into his hands.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Determined to find out why things are not as they ought to be, Hiei goes back to demon world and demands answers from Mukuro and is both surprised and angered at what she tells him. He then resorts to adopting the tactics that Shuichi taught him by creating another reality chart and mapping out the variances in the vain hope of figuring out the problem. **Chapter 18 – Look Around**

 **A/N:** Oh more emo in the coming chapters… It's quite hard writing emo, since I usually just write Disney, but I wanted to try something a bit more challenging, and apart from the more emo moments, this has been enjoyable to write.

Also I wanted to write a fic where I did to Hiei what I did to Botan in _My Downfall_ : ie she spent all of that fic chasing after Hiei thinking that he would never love her back, now it's Hiei's turn to chase after Botan wondering if she'll ever love him back (insert evil laughter here).

…Please review!


	18. Look Around

**Recap:** Hiei tried to figure out why the reality he was in was not paradise, and he did find out that Kuwabara and Yukina were distant because Yukina was waiting for her brother's approval to be with Kuwabara, something he thought she had gained from him in the paradise reality. He also found out that he was not with Botan in this reality because Mukuro had disapproved of him being her.

* * *

 **Chapter 18: Look Around**

Hiei almost walked right into Botan before realising that she was there. For some reason he still could not explain, he was unable to sense her presence in this reality.

"Hiei," she greeted him, looking a little surprised and frankly a little pissed off that he had stumbled upon her. "What are you doing out here?"

"I live here," Hiei grunted, the words leaving his mouth before he realised his error.

"You live here?" Botan repeated.

She slowly looked about herself at the densely packed, tall trees around them.

"You live in this forest?" she asked, meeting his eyes again. "In the living world?"

"No, I…"

Hiei looked about himself nervously. He did not live there in any reality but the paradise reality, and so there was no explanation he could give for why he had gone there that the Botan of his current reality would understand.

"I like this part of the forest," Botan said when he did not finish his partial answer. "It's very tranquil. The sunlight comes through the trees in a certain way, and on a night like tonight, the moonlight comes through the trees in the same way and it looks so magical."

She tilted her head back and looked up at the full moon, which was intermittently visible through the swaying treetops high above them.

"This would be a nice place to live," she said.

"It's the perfect place to live," Hiei said with a sigh.

"Probably not very practical though," she said, smiling sadly. "There's no space to build a house here without cutting down all the trees and that would spoil the atmosphere."

"There's no need to cut down all the trees," he said. "Just enough of them to make space for the house."

"But what about the tree-roots in the ground? You couldn't lay foundations for a house in ground like this. There are too many roots too deep into the ground."

"The house isn't built into the ground, it's elevated amongst the trees."

Botan turned to Hiei and gave him a questioning look. He supposed that she was wondering why and how he knew that a decent house could be built where they were standing and in such a fashion – it was, after all, quite a strange concept for a house, and certainly one that Hiei would never have entertained unless he had seen it with his own eyes.

"An elevated house?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied, looking up into the trees.

"Like the one that famous singer lives in?"

"I don't know about that."

"It's a house built on legs."

Hiei started to tell her that he had not been describing a house on legs, rather he had been talking about a house that was literally mounted into the trunks of the trees themselves but he stopped partway through as he felt that strange sense of déjà vu consuming him once more.

"A house built on legs?" he asked.

She nodded.

"It's quite hideous, actually," she said. "I don't really understand why anyone would want to live in such a house."

Hiei's brain started to reconfigure the picture of a house on legs inside his mind, and he remembered that he had seen a picture of such a house in his own reality, in a leaflet that Kuwabara had given him – and he had referred to it as a famous singer's house too. Whilst Hiei did not really care whose house it was, he was intrigued by the fact that it bore a strange resemblance to his tree-house home in the paradise reality.

"I want to see it," he said.

"What?" Botan echoed.

"I want to see the house on legs," he said. "Where is it?"

"It's a long way from here," she replied. "At least two hours by train, and then a long walk because it's in a remote location."

"Take me there, I have to see it."

"I can't take you there. Go yourself."

"I don't know where it is, you have to come with me and show me!"

"I can't!"

"Yes you can! Get out your oar and let's go!"

"I'm not a ferry girl any more Hiei! I can't fly my oar – I don't even have an oar!"

Hiei sighed in frustration, but he was determined not to give up.

"I have to see that house, don't go anywhere because I'll be back," he told Botan.

"I live here now, Hiei," she replied. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Good," he said.

She made a noise of annoyance and rolled her eyes as though he had just said something stupid and offensive but he did not have the patience to find out what. It was already late and he could not wait until the next morning for answers. He ran back inside the temple, darting through the various rooms and hallways until he eventually found Kuwabara still sat at the dining room table, face-down in his mostly-eaten cold dinner, fast asleep.

"Idiot," Hiei grumbled, stomping over to where he was sat. "Wake up!"

Kuwabara groaned and slowly lifted his head, food dripping from his face as he looked about himself in a confused daze.

"Get your car, I need you to show me where the house on legs is!" Hiei snapped at him.

"Do what?" Kuwabara echoed, wiping a piece of fish from one eye.

"Get your car and go to the house on legs," Hiei said, talking deliberately slowly and sarcastically. "I will follow you on foot."

"…I don't have a car, Hiei," Kuwabara replied. "I've never had a car."

"…What? But that doesn't make any sense! And yes you do have a car! I've seen you driving it! I've been in it when you've been driving it!"

"Kurama has a car and he let me borrow it one time, and Keiko has a car, but I don't have a car. I can't afford a car, I can barely afford the rent on my apartment."

"What the hell are you talking about? You live here, you idiot!"

"…No, Yukina lives here. I live in the city, in my own apartment."

"…What?"

"It wouldn't be right for me to move in with her until we're… Closer."

Hiei sighed and rolled his eyes.

"If you don't have a car, how did you get here today?" he asked.

"The bus," Kuwabara replied. "And then I walked."

"Idiot…" Hiei muttered.

"What?" Kuwabara echoed.

"Nothing," Hiei lied. "Since you can't help me get to that house, can you at least answer this question: if you did live here with Yukina and you were not paying for an apartment, would you have a car instead?"

"Yeah, I could probably afford a car if I didn't have to pay the rent on my apartment, I guess. Nothing fancy though."

Hiei nodded. At least that explained one thing. He decided that he had found the difference between paradise Kuwabara and all the other Kuwabara's: Yukina. In the paradise reality, Kuwabara lived with Yukina and so did not need to work such long hours because he did not have to pay for an apartment in the city – which Hiei understood was an expensive thing – and he could afford to own a car. In all the other realities, Kuwabara did not live with Yukina because they were not close enough, and so he had to work long hours to pay for his apartment in the city.

And presumably working the longer hours had turned him into the whining bitch he was in every reality except the paradise reality.

Though it did seem a little odd that hard work could have changed him so much, since he was usually the sort to rise to a challenge and accept his responsibilities without complaint.

"How did the others get here?" he asked.

"In their cars," Kuwabara replied.

Hiei took off again, quickly finding Kurama, who – according to Kuwabara – had a car.

"Take me to the house on legs," he demanded.

Kurama, who was playing cards with Yusuke and Kuwabara's sister, looked up slowly.

"What?" he asked.

"The house on legs," Hiei said. "Take me there."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Hiei," he said.

"I do!" Keiko called out from the other end of the room. "He's talking about that singer's house, the weird-looking one near the mountains. Have you never seen it before?"

"No," Kurama replied.

"I need to go there," Hiei said, turning to Keiko. "You have a car, take me there."

"I'll take you there at the weekend, if you like," she offered. "I have work tomorrow, and it's already past ten–"

"I don't care, I have to go there right now," Hiei insisted.

"So go there yourself, you're a fast runner!" Yusuke said.

"I don't know where it is!" Hiei snapped.

"I'll give you directions," Keiko offered. "It's in a slightly remote location, but it's really easy to find because it's high up."

She began writing something onto a piece of paper and Hiei waited as patiently as he could until she had finished.

"There you go," she said, smiling sweetly at him and offering him the paper she had written on. "Now you might want to watch out for the–"

"Gimme that," Hiei grunted, snatching the paper from her.

He ran from the room before she could say any more, not especially caring what piece of nonsense she had been about to impart upon him. As he ran across the temple grounds he studied her writings, finding a list of instructions for reaching the destination by road – it was probably quicker and easier to reach it away from the roads, but Hiei had no other choice but to follow her instructions, which began by taking him back into the city and out the other side of it.

It was going to be a long journey, but Hiei felt confident that he was going to learn something valuable from it.

* * *

Hiei stood outside the grandiose entrance gates to the gargantuan wooden house on legs for over half an hour before accepting that he was not going to learn anything from being there. But for the light of the full moon and the stars in the sky, the estate was in darkness, and the finer details of it difficult to clearly define by sight alone. It looked abandoned and slightly rundown – just like the old lady's temple of Hiei's current reality did – and it was, as Botan had warned him it would be, "quite hideous, actually". Hiei had hoped that he might find some sort of clue about the origins of his tree-house from visiting the strange architectural disaster in front of him, but alas it had all been in vain.

Hiei could not even describe what he was looking at. It seemed as though someone had been trying to describe Hiei's tree-house to someone else, and they had grossly misinterpreted that explanation and produced a very poor replica from it. Although the similarities were not great, it was the concept of an elevated, circular wooden house that was unique to both Hiei's tree-house and the house he was now looking at that he had been attracted to. He had never seen another building like either of them, and so he had hoped that they were connected somehow, and maybe the one he was looking at would contain a clue as to how his own house had come about and in turn how it had become home to Botan and Monzan.

But instead Hiei found himself standing staring at an eye-sore of a building in the middle of the night feeling as confused as ever.

He thought about going back to the others, but as it was well into the night they would all have gone to sleep, and Hiei had already napped earlier and was keen to avoid prolonged sleeps that might speed the healing of the wound that was holding him where he was, so he decided to confront another source of his confusion: Mukuro.

As Hiei took off in search of a passage to demon world, he considered that Mukuro would probably also be asleep, but as she was apparently the reason that he had not married Botan, he did not give a fuck about waking her up. He was still a little rattled that she would be so judgemental and selfish – if he truly had gone to her for her approval of his marrying Botan, what objections could she possibly have had? When he thought a little more about the matter, he remembered that she had been quite snippy with him in his own reality regarding his desire to marry Botan, so perhaps it was not so unreasonable to assume that she had not given her blessing in this reality after all.

But, if Mukuro really had disapproved so strongly, and Hiei really had taken her rejection to heart, why had he still married Botan anyway in the paradise reality?

Maybe that was the difference of decision, he thought. Perhaps in the paradise reality he had told Mukuro to shove her rejection somewhere unpleasant and defied her by marrying Botan. And yet Mukuro had seemed very easy with him and had even joked about him going back to his family in the living world, meaning that she was either more forgiving than he gave her credit for or she had given him her approval in the paradise reality.

But that would have been a difference in her decisions, not his.

"Fuck," Hiei grumbled, forcing himself to run faster.

He eventually found his way back to demon world, where he had to travel some way to get back to Mukuro's fortress, finally arriving there as the horizon started to lighten in the prelude to sunrise. Mukuro was not opposed to waking early in the morning and he hoped that she might already be awake when he reached her. He headed straight to her chambers without bothering to confirm her location and shouldered his way through the door, bringing himself face-to-face with Mukuro in a dressing gown with a mug of something in one hand and still drowsy expression on her face.

"Well good morning," she said flatly. "Why don't you come right in?"

"I don't have time for your jokes," Hiei sternly replied. "I need you to tell me why the hell you didn't approve of me marrying Botan."

Mukuro's face twisted and she put her mug down onto her nightstand.

"That's why you burst into my bedroom at the crack of dawn?" she asked, folding her arms. "Because suddenly, eight years later, you're upset that I told you not to marry the ferry girl?"

"So you admit it?" he responded.

"I never denied it," she replied. "Marrying that girl was a ridiculous idea. Relations between demon world and spirit world are better now than they ever have been, but you stealing one of spirit world's ferry girls would have ruined that. And, in case you've forgotten, it was more complicated than that. Koenma had his eye on that girl himself and he was furious that you were the reason she had asked to be freed of her duties in spirit world. You came here with her clinging onto you like a pair of silly children who thought they were in love and you asked me for an honest opinion, which I gave to you. She was a plain, unintelligent, uninspiring, weak girl who was completely unsuitable for you. You were blinded by lust – though I'll never understand why, since she was a ferry girl and had no experience or skills in satisfying a man – and you were about to make a very stupid mistake, which I did my best to stop you from. Frankly I was glad when you asked me for my approval, because before that point, you had been hell-bent on having her regardless of what anyone else thought on the matter – including her! You chased that girl for over a year before she so much as looked your way, at the detriment of all of your other responsibilities and friends. You would vanish for weeks at a time so that you could follow her around, pride apparently forgotten as you practically begged her to be your woman. I humoured it because I thought that once you'd had a taste you would let it go, but no. You kept right at it. It was ridiculous, shameful and it jeopardised the relationship between all three worlds when she was made to become human."

"You had no right to tell me what to do," Hiei said quietly.

"I had every right," Mukuro corrected him. "One day my kingdom will be yours, Hiei. I've worked a lifetime to make it as great and prosperous as it is. I trust you to continue to build this kingdom after I am gone, and I trust you to find yourself an heir just as I did in you. And, just as I did when choosing you, you will choose a demon of great strength and intellect: you will not leave this kingdom in the hands of your own bastard half-human offspring. Is that clear?"

"How dare you speak about my son like that?" Hiei growled

"You don't have a son, Hiei. By a miracle, you took my advice and dropped that ferry girl. You probably will have a son one day, but he will be demon born and his mother will not be a mere moderately attractive, unintelligent, skittish ferry girl."

Hiei felt another inkling of déjà vu as Mukuro described Botan the same way she had in his own reality. That seemed to confirm than that Mukuro disapproved of his marrying Botan, but why then had she been so relaxed about the idea in the paradise reality?

"What would you have done if I had married her anyway?" he asked, deciding that this was a time for words and not violence – though the temptation to attack her for her misgivings about his family was strong.

"I thought you were going to just marry her anyway," she replied. "I was shocked when you didn't. But pleasantly shocked, obviously."

"What if I had?" Hiei pressed. "What if I had just said "fuck you" and married her anyway, and what if I did have a "bastard half-human" child?"

"Then I would have given you two choices: either you got rid of them or you left my service, because I would have no need for anyone foolish enough to devote his entire life to a spirit and a half-human child."

"And what if I told you I'm going to marry her now?"

"You can't. Or at least, you'd have to be incredibly stupid to want that."

"Because she's not up to your standards?"

"No, because she's a human now and she won't live nearly as long as you will."

"That's just temporary. She had to become human for ten years before she could become a spirit with a permanent physical presence."

"I believe that was the case before she went back to Koenma and tried to explain that you no longer wanted her and she wanted back into her ferry girl life. At that point, for breaking the terms of her agreement, she was stripped of her powers and condemned to live and age as a human permanently."

Hiei felt his blood run cold through his veins.

"What?" he said.

"Botan is no different from any other human now, Hiei," Mukuro said. "She'll grow old and die just like a human and she doesn't even have the benefit of her defensive magic tricks any more to make her so charming."

"Is this a joke?" Hiei asked. "Or a sick lie to piss me off?"

"Do I look like I'm joking or lying, Hiei?"

Mukuro gave Hiei a flat look that clearly told him that she was being nothing but brutally honest with him. He was struggling to believe any part of what she had said to him since his arrival – from her blunt agreement that she had refused to approve of his marriage to Botan to her account of how Botan had now become permanently human – and he found himself feeling numb. The only thought that he could focus on was that Mukuro's opinion of Botan and of his marrying her was really not that unexpected, and so he had to conclude that she had reacted the same way in the paradise reality – so just what had that other Hiei done to change her mind?

"Any more old issues you'd like to vent before I have breakfast?" Mukuro asked him sarcastically.

"Just one," Hiei replied. "Are there any circumstances you can think of that would have made you change your mind about me marrying Botan?"

"No," she said.

"You didn't even stop to think before you answered!"

"There's nothing to think about. It was a stupid idea then and it's an even more ridiculous idea now."

"Would you just stop and think about it?"

Mukuro glared at him in a way he knew meant that she was near the end of her patience, but he almost welcomed it – if she attacked him first he could justify hitting her back.

"She made a complete ass of herself when she came here that day," she said after a short silence had passed between them. "She clung onto you the whole time and said stupid things like "this castle is so splendid" and "oopsie, I think I just stepped in rural doo-doo". That was the only time I ever met her, that was my first and last impression of her, and it was one of weakness, stupidity and hopelessness."

"I thought she was weak, stupid and hopeless when I first met her too!" Hiei said. "It's the impression she gives when you first meet her, but that's not what she is at all!"

"What is she then, Hiei?" Mukuro asked. "What was so great about Botan that you took leave of your senses and forgot yourself and everything you were working towards to chase after her?"

"Idiot, I wasn't working towards anything when I fell in love with Botan! My life had become empty and all I was looking forward to was a so-called "honourable" death at the hands of my own former allies, because the only good thing that I had ahead of me was death! Botan changed that because she showed me another life, one with Monzan, and baths, and tree-houses, and sex, and family, and friends, and sex, and a second son, and loving touches, and walks in the forest, and sex and a future in demon world with a wife and children and sex!"

Mukuro groaned and rolled her eyes.

"I think you forgot to mention all the sex she gave you," she drawled sarcastically.

"You've got no idea how–"

Hiei stopped abruptly as Mukuro left the room and slammed the door shut behind her. He sighed and let his shoulders slump forwards in defeat. That other Hiei had really worked hard to be with Botan, he thought. Though he supposed that what Mukuro had just said to him was no worse than what Koenma must have put Botan through when she asked to become a full spirit to be Hiei's lover.

And suddenly Hiei had an epiphany: the speech he had just given Mukuro had been his own thoughts, not the thoughts of any of the other Hieis from any of the other realities.

"Shit," he muttered, opening the door and leaving Mukuro's room.

* * *

"Hiei?"

"Go away, I'm busy."

Hiei hunched over closer to the large sheet of paper he was writing on. Conveniently for his purposes, it was a very large piece of paper and it was pinned to an angled table that meant he did not have to double over completely to write on it. There was some sort of sketchy, linear, pencil-drawn image on the page, but Hiei had found himself a nice, big, chunky black marker pen that was doing a fantastic job of obscuring whatever had been scribbled on the page before he had got to it.

"Hiei, what are you doing here?"

"That's not your concern, idiot."

Hiei had, upon travelling to another reality, lost the "reality chart" Shuichi had constructed for him back in his own reality, and so he had been forced to start on a new one. It was taking him some time to remember how it was supposed to work, but he was determined to finish it and add in the additional information he now had.

"Um, Hiei, I was kinda using that piece of paper."

"Well I'm using it now!"

He had remembered the names of the various realities he had visited – after some time spent thinking about them and shuddering with dread as he considered some of the worse ones – and he had come up with a name for the reality he was now in: he had called it "near miss". That was, after all, what it was. He had written all the key names along the top – Kurama, Botan, Yukina, Monzan, Yusuke, Kuwabara and even Keiko – and now he had added Maya. He had never encountered Maya in any reality where Kurama was not still in the body of Shuichi, but he was adding her anyway, since she was always present when he did encounter Kurama in his human form, and so he had to assume that she was important somehow too.

"How did you even get in here?"

"The roof."

Hiei had almost finished writing about the different versions of everyone that he had met and when he had met them and he had an idea about adding some sort of secondary chart that "mapped out" all the decisions he had made – good or bad – that had made paradise or deviated from it.

"You didn't even put the tile back in place."

"Is there a reason you're still talking at me?"

Hiei lifted his head and fixed his eyes onto Kuwabara, who was standing at his side fidgeting nervously with his briefcase.

"Well, um," he began. "You are kinda at my desk, and I was supposed to start work ten minutes ago. Also your using my drawing pad and you're writing over one of my sketches for a project I've been working on all week, so I guess that means I'm gonna have to start again, and since you used a marker pen, the ink has soaked through all the pages of my sketchpad, so it looks like I'll need to get another one before I can even start–"

"I don't care about any of those things," Hiei interrupted him. "I'm busy! Go away!"

Hiei ignored the glares he was getting from Kuwabara and all the other mindless idiots in the office and continued making his chart. He had been unable to find any big pieces of paper in the old lady's temple so he had gone to the building Kuwabara worked in, where he could remember seeing plenty of paper, and by luck he had found some especially big pieces of paper at Kuwabara's desk.

Of course, the people at the entrance of the building had refused him access to the location he sought, and so he had been forced to climb into a tunnel on the roof of the building and navigate his way to Kuwabara's section of the building, where he had easily been able to drop out again as the roof was made of lightweight tiles that could easily be lifted up and replaced without detection.

"Was this necessary?" Kuwabara asked, picking up a shard of the tile Hiei had punched his way through.

"I don't care," Hiei muttered, not even bothering to lift his head from his task.

"Look, Hiei, you aren't supposed to be in here, you've just ruined all my work and now you're gonna get me in a lot of trouble with my boss if you don't leave right now," Kuwabara said.

"Are you still here?" Hiei snapped, turning sharply to Kuwabara and glaring at him threateningly.

"I work here, Hiei," Kuwabara flatly replied.

"Well I'm working here right now."

"…You have to get out of here."

Hiei sighed impatiently. Obviously he was going to have to leave, since obviously Kuwabara was completely unable to take a hint.

"Fine," he grunted, stuffing his pen into his pocket and forcibly removing the raised part of the desk from the remainder of the desk it was a part of. "I'm going."

Kuwabara slowly ran his eyes over him.

"…Did you have to take the whole table?" he asked. "You couldn't have just taken the pad of paper?"

"I'm using this, I'll take it if I want to!" Hiei snapped irritably.

"Stupid munchkin…"

"I don't know what a "munchkin" is, but if I ever find one, I'm going to bludgeon you to death with it!"

Hiei marched off when Kuwabara did not answer him. He sensed that most of the rest of the people in the office were staring at him again, but he did not really care. He had what he needed, and since Kuwabara would not give him peace to finish his work, he would just have to find somewhere else to complete it undisturbed.

After a small amount of debate on the matter, Hiei took himself back to the point in the forest where his house was supposed to be, scaling the same tree he had slept in briefly the day before and lodging his newly acquired angled desk between the branch he was sat on and the trunk of the tree, straddling the branch and facing the page he had been working on.

He finished the chart as best he could before tearing it from the pad of paper and stuffing it into his pocket. He then started writing on the next page – which was marked with several black dots where his pen had soaked through from the previous page. He was not really sure what he was doing, but he could remember seeing something called a "timeline" in Mukuro's office once before, and he decided he would use that concept to create his next chart. Hiei drew a line down the centre of the page and noted on it the key events in his own reality from his encounter with the rock monster onwards. He then marked on where he had visited realities related to different decisions he had made – because Shuichi had said that if he could see where he had made wrong decisions, he would be able to see where he could correct them.

Once he was done Hiei sat back and looked at the page for a long time. It was a mess – and not just because he had pressed too hard on the page with the pen. Also the fumes from the pen were starting to make him feel dizzy. But he had at least found some mistakes that he could rectify to fix the reality he was in and turn it into paradise – or as close to paradise as he could get since Botan was permanently human and would never be able to relocate to demon world with him.

But he understood the first thing he had to do: first of all he had to find Botan and make her marry him.

Also he had to make her lose weight, because she looked terrible.

* * *

Hiei waited patiently for over an hour for Yusuke to take him to where he needed to be. He had gone to Yusuke because he knew that Yusuke would know where to find Botan – since she had not been at the temple when he had checked, and Yukina had only been able to tell him that she was "at work". Eventually the rush of the lunch orders at Yukimura Restaurant passed and Yusuke agreed to take Hiei to Botan's place of work, which he apparently wanted to do because Keiko also worked there, and he had reasoned that if they walked the journey, they would arrive there in time to meet both women as they finished work for the day.

"So what made you change your mind?" Yusuke asked him as they walked through the city.

"Change my mind about what?" Hiei asked.

"Botan of course!" Yusuke said. "I thought things were long over between you two."

"I made a mistake," Hiei replied.

"I thought you never made mistakes or had regrets?"

Hiei looked up at Yusuke from the corner of his eye, growling as he saw the smirk on the Mazoku's face.

"Just don't upset her," he said, becoming serious. "You really messed her up when you left her. She had to go through so much shit, and she didn't deserve that. She's a nag and an idiot, but she's still my friend, and she's got a good heart."

"I know," Hiei replied. "I'm going to make this right. I'm fixing it. I'm going to fix Botan and then I'm going to fix Yukina."

"…You're going to fix Yukina?" Yusuke repeated. "That sounds… Strange…"

"I'm going to tell her that her brother is dead," Hiei explained. "Kuwabara said she can't move on with her life until she knows for sure what became of her brother, so I'm going to tell her that I found him, and that he was already dead, and I'm going to give her back her hiruiseki. That way she can move on with her life."

"Why don't you just tell her that you are her brother? Wouldn't that be kinder? After all this time of you "looking" it's a bit lame to just tell her that her brother died."

"It's better this way. I'm making improvements on what that other Hiei did, because I don't think that telling her the truth is the right way to go. I'm making this a better paradise than the real one."

"…What?"

Hiei and Yusuke stopped at the roadside, watching the cars streaming past them as they waited for the traffic lights to change in their favour. Hiei had no real interest in human cars – or any manner of vehicles for that matter – because he had always been able to run anywhere that he had wanted to go just as fast as taking a car: but as the traffic lights changed and a big white car stopped by his side he suddenly found himself interested.

"That's Kuwabara's car," he said, pointing at it.

"What?" Yusuke echoed.

"That car, it's Kuwabara's," Hiei repeated.

It was exactly the same car Hiei had seen Kuwabara driving in the paradise reality: it was the same shape (sort of big and long), the same colour (white), it had the same unusual wheels (with especially shiny bits) and it had the same funny little badge on the front of it. The windows were tinted and difficult to easily see through, but even despite that, Hiei could still see that the interior of the car looked the same too – except that the booster seat for Monzan was absent from the back seat.

"Hiei, have you lost your mind?" Yusuke asked. "Kuwabara doesn't have a car, and even if he did, there's no way he would be driving a car like that. That's a 12 million Yen car, that's more money than Kuwabara makes in a year! That's more money than he makes in five years!"

"But that was the car that…" Hiei began, stopping himself as he saw the confused look on Yusuke's face and remembered that this Yusuke would not know about paradise Kuwabara and his big white car. "That's the car that Kuwabara would drive if he lived with Yukina. He can't buy it now because he has to pay for his apartment."

Yusuke's face twisted further and Hiei wondered what he had said wrong this time.

"Hiei, that's a 12 million Yen car," he said again. "Kuwabara couldn't afford that even if he was promoted to manager of the firm he works at! That's a rich man's car, most humans don't own cars that expensive!"

"But that was the car he was…"

Hiei felt his own face start to contort in confusion, and he turned back to the car in question. He was positive that it was the same car Kuwabara had been driving in the paradise reality, yet as he considered what Yusuke had just told him and looked around all the other cars stopped at the crossing he could see that none of the other vehicles were as big, as shiny or as pretty as the one right next to him.

"A rich man's car?" he muttered.

"Yeah, a rich man's car," Yusuke answered. "Kuwabara would never be able to drive something like that. Not unless he won the lottery or became the king of something."

The lights changed and the traffic started to move again. Hiei and Yusuke had missed their chance to cross the road, but Hiei barely cared as he watched the car drive away until it was out of sight, one sickening thought slowly flooding the recesses of his mind: in the paradise reality, Kuwabara had lots of spare time and an expensive car because he was rich, and the only way an idiot like him could ever become rich was by luck.

Or by selling Yukina's tears.

That was a side of paradise Hiei had not seen or considered before: perhaps things there were not so idyllic after all. And that proved that his telling Yukina that he was her brother and then approving of her being with Kuwabara had been a bad decision, because Kuwabara had consequently gone on to exploit her for his own wealth.

Still, she had been ridiculously happy in the paradise reality, which contradicted Hiei's theory that Kuwabara was making her cry all the time.

Hiei pulled a ball of paper from each pocket and flung them out onto the road. What he had just witnessed had completely messed up his plans for how to fix the reality he was in.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei discovers a few more oddities in the reality he is in before starting the process of trying to fix things, only to find that his efforts don't always bring the results he was expecting, leaving him more confused than ever about whether or not he should leave "near miss" reality. **Chapter 19 – Anything I Do.**

 **A/N:** To put this into context, there is about 100 Yen to 1 US Dollar, so 12 million Yen is about 120k US Dollars. I'm putting it into context because it's actually an important aside: not finished with the Kuwabara thing by a long shot…


	19. Anything I Do

**Recap:** Hiei went to see the house on legs but found no clues for how to kick-start paradise, he learned that Kuwabara is a lot less financially stable and cannot afford the luxury car he owned in paradise and he learned the Mukuro was quite adamantly against the idea of him marrying Botan despite her having seemed quite accepting of it in paradise. In the end he just felt confused…

* * *

 **Chapter 19: Anything I Do**

Hiei was confused. He had actually been confused since Mukuro had first used her new attack on him, but never more so than he was now. He had thought that telling Yukina that her brother was dead and so freeing her to make her own decisions would have led to Kuwabara going to live with her at the temple and him no longer working long hours and leaving her alone so much, making them both happier – not that Hiei cared about making Kuwabara happy, it was just going to be a side-effect of making Yukina happy. But if Yukina letting Kuwabara live with her meant Kuwabara using her for her tears then Hiei could not allow that to happen. And if Kuwabara did use Yukina for her tears after they became lovers, why had she been so happy with him in the paradise reality? And if Kuwabara did just use her for her tears, why had he become that way, after always being a man who prided himself on his "code of honour" and the chivalrous way he treated all women, especially Yukina?

Something was missing, Hiei decided. There was something he was overlooking somehow, and clearly it related to Kuwabara – that much had been obvious since he had first noticed that Kuwabara was unaffected across the myriad of realities that he had encountered him in.

"Here we are," Yusuke said, stopping suddenly.

Hiei stopped at his side and turned to look at the building they were outside the gates of.

"Isn't this a school?" Hiei asked.

"Yeah, Keiko's a teacher here," Yusuke replied. "And she got Botan a job here too, helping look out for the kids who have special needs. She's actually perfect for it, since she loves kids so much and she's completely non-judgemental about their problems."

Hiei nodded, though he was not really entirely sure that he understood. He did not especially care what Botan was doing in that building, but he did know that she did not do it in the paradise reality, because he could clearly remember Kurama telling him about how that other Hiei had arranged for the tree-house to be built so that Botan had a place to stay without the need for her to work. That was another difference he would have to rectify somehow – probably by getting the tree-house built, he supposed.

As they waited for Keiko and Botan, Hiei tried to ignore the children who began spilling out of the school and he tried to focus on his reason for being there instead. The wound that had brought him there, whilst having been quite deep initially, was starting to heal already, and he suspected that it would not sustain him where he was as long as he had anticipated it would. In fact, he thought to himself, based on how the wound had looked when he had checked on it before going to find Yusuke, he would probably only last another day, depending on how much sleep he got. He was not too tired yet, but he knew that if he went another night without sleeping he would start to feel lethargic, meaning that he would have to widen his wound if he did decide to stay where he was.

Before Hiei could reach a definitive answer on what he would do, he caught sight of Keiko and Botan leaving the building ahead of them. Keiko looked shockingly better in this reality than she did in Hiei's own, he thought, not just in her clothing and the way she held herself but even in her eyes he could see that she was different – probably just because she had never been separated from Yusuke, who she was clearly as devoted to as ever. Botan, on the other hand, looked worse in this reality than she had in any other that Hiei had visited, including the one where she had been a low-class demon. Hiei was not one to judge anyone based solely on their physical appearance, but after having always known Botan as the slender and pretty ferry girl, seeing her as an overweight human with an unflattering haircut and terrible clothing it was difficult for him not to be disgusted with her.

Still, he supposed, she was not beyond repair like the Botan of his own reality was. This Botan was completely removed from spirit world – and so did not have the complications of a potential relationship with Koenma hanging over her – and, although bitter, she had once loved Hiei and probably could do so again.

And without Botan, there was no Monzan, and Hiei's son was the most important thing this reality needed to make it better.

Keiko and Yusuke greeted each other with a hug and Hiei was left facing Botan, who was deliberately avoiding looking at him.

"I'm heading back home with Keiko in the car," Yusuke told Hiei. "Why don't you walk Botan back to the temple?"

"The temple is a two-hour walk from here, Yusuke!" Botan protested.

"You guys probably have a lot to catch up on though," Yusuke replied. "Catch you later!"

Yusuke started to walk off but Keiko lingered back, touching a hand to Botan's shoulder and frowning in concern.

"I'll give you a lift back if you want," she said quietly.

Botan shook her head.

"No, it's alright," she said. "Go on home, I don't mind the walk."

"Are you sure?" Keiko asked her.

Botan nodded and they bid each other goodbye. Botan turned to face Hiei then, looking directly at him at last.

"I don't know what you want with me, Hiei," she said flatly.

"I want to walk you back to the temple," he said, deciding to use Yusuke's excuse for his presence.

"It's a long walk for someone as slow as me," she replied.

"That's fine," Hiei lied.

He would make her walk quickly, he decided, and hopefully she would start losing some weight.

"It's just strange to see you here again after so long," she said as they started to move on. "You barely visit Yukina here, so you coming back to this realm and staying here for an entire day is quite… Strange."

"I need to fix some things," Hiei said.

He realised than that he had no idea how to fix anything: he had thought that he would just put Botan on a diet and marry her, but now, confronted by her, he realised that he had not actually thought about how he was going to convince her to do what she needed to.

"Are you going to tell Yukina that you are her brother?" Botan asked him.

"No, I'm going to…"

Hiei stopped talking as he realised that his plans to tell Yukina that her brother was dead had also been quashed. He could not fix things with Yukina yet, not until he was sure that it was the right thing to do.

"It would be nice if you did, Hiei," Botan added. "She would like to know, it would give her peace of mind. Also she won't commit herself to Kuwabara unless she has your approval, so you might want to think about that, too. The longer you put off telling her, the more miserable you make her and Kuwabara."

"I don't care about Kuwabara," Hiei pointed out.

"Well you should, he has been a good friend to us all and he adores your sister," she replied. "He takes very good care of her and he just wants to love her, but he can't because of you."

"I don't know that he wouldn't use her for her tears."

"How could you say such a thing? Of course he wouldn't!"

"Hn."

Hiei wanted to believe that Botan was right, but he was so unsure. He would never know for sure unless he got back to paradise and asked the Kuwabara there if he was using Yukina for her tears: and he was starting to doubt that he would ever get that opportunity.

"Anyway, I have to stop by his apartment on the way home," Botan said suddenly, snapping Hiei out of his thoughts.

"Kuwabara's apartment?" he asked. "Why do you need to go to Kuwabara's apartment?"

"To feed his cat, Eiikichi," she replied. "I tried to take her to live at the temple with Yukina, but she's old now and set in her ways, and she won't leave Kuwabara's apartment, even though she is alone in there most of the time."

"Of course."

"He loves that cat. He always has. He takes very good care of her, even though he is very busy and over-worked."

"Hn."

"He would never let her down."

Hiei sighed sharply.

"Are you trying to pick a fight with me, woman?" he asked impatiently.

"No," she replied, clearing lying. "I was just stating the facts. If you don't like them maybe you have a guilty conscience."

"I don't know why I let Mukuro make my mind up for me," he said. "I don't know why me taking you to see her changed anything. We should have just got married anyway."

"We couldn't have, Hiei," she said, sounding suddenly deflated. "Our plan was to go and live with Mukuro after my human trial was over, and after she met me she told us both that she wouldn't ever let me into her home again. If we had just married anyway, you never could have gone back. Or else we would have had to have lived separately from each other, and what would be the point in that?"

"You could have lived here in the living world. It would have worked."

"It could only have worked if you were willing to make it work, and you weren't. You just gave up on me. I don't know what Mukuro said to you that day but it turned you back into the Hiei I'd always known before: the one who barely noticed that I existed and only ever spoke to me to correct me or to insult me."

"I don't care what she thinks any more."

"Oh well that's nice for you. It's a shame it took you so many years to feel that way. Meanwhile I've been here living as a human, getting older, trying to earn money when I had no skills or qualifications to get a good job and my heart was breaking from being dumped so coldly by the man I fought spirit world for."

"I'm not apologising. I've already seen what happens when I apologise to you for mistakes I've made: you don't forgive me. Instead, you get all bitchy and join the SDF."

Botan's face twisted in confusion but Hiei ignored her. He knew that he was right. Apologising was pointless, because he was not the Hiei that had left her because of something Mukuro had said and he had seen in another reality that, when he seriously wronged Botan and then apologised, she never actually accepted his statement of regret and instead continued to hold a grudge.

"This way," she said suddenly, turning down another street.

Hiei followed her and for the first time started to pay closer attention to his surroundings. Walking across the city from Yukimura Restaurant to the school had been much like any other passage through the city that Hiei had taken, but the street Botan was leading him down was different. The buildings around them looked dirty somehow and uncared for, and there were infrequent deposits of garbage in parts of the street. Some windows were broken and some walls had been decorated with graffiti, reminding Hiei of the old lady's temple in his own reality.

"What is this?" he asked as they passed an obviously abandoned building that had been quite badly vandalised.

"A shortcut to Kuwabara's apartment," Botan replied.

"Do you come this way all the time?" Hiei asked. "It seems dangerous for a human like you."

"Your concern is flattering," she drawled. "But no, usually I get a lift from Keiko."

Hiei was glad that Botan did not regularly walk that street on her own, as he was sure that it was not the sort of neighbourhood that a girl like her should be walking around in on her own, least of all now that she had been stripped of what little powers she had once possessed. They continued on to the end of the street and turned onto another street that was slightly less rundown but lined with much taller buildings and Hiei almost grabbed Botan and asked her if she had lost her mind when he saw her approaching the door of one of the buildings.

"Here it is," she said, opening the door and walking inside. "Are you coming with me, or do you just want to wait out here?"

Hiei did not answer her, instead glaring at her as he stepped through the doorway and then began surveying his surroundings with increasing disdain.

"This is it?" he asked as they started up the stairs. "This is where Kuwabara lives? I don't know much about the human world and human culture, but this place looks and smells like a shit-hole."

"Hiei, that's unkind," Botan reprimanded him. "Kuwabara doesn't have a lot of money and this is all he can afford."

At the mention of money once more Hiei again became suspicious and confused. It was impossible that an apartment within the disgusting building he was currently in was worth the 12 million Yen Yusuke had claimed that big car was worth, so clearly there was a bigger difference between paradise Kuwabara and all the other Kuwabara's that Hiei was not yet seeing: and as it seemed to be related to his financial wealth, Hiei had to believe that paradise Kuwabara was indeed doing the unthinkable and exploiting Yukina for her tears.

Which completely contradicted the heartfelt speech the Kuwabara of this reality had given him the night before about how much he loved Yukina: if he truly did love her so much, he would never even think of selling her tears for the sake of a stupid car.

Botan eventually stopped at a door and opened it up, taking them into Kuwabara's apartment, which was less than a third of the size that Hiei had been expecting it to be: it was basically one room and a bathroom.

"This is a shit-hole," he muttered, ignoring the stern glare his comment earned him from Botan.

He did not care what she thought because he was speaking the truth. The interior of the apartment was the tidiest and most presentable feature about it, so at least Kuwabara was trying to live well, but it was still a hideous building in a terrible part of the city, and, Hiei noted with great disgust, it was inhabited by a fat old cat that was excessively noisy and apparently incontinent, according to the wet patches on the carpet.

"Why does he live like this?" Hiei asked.

Although the interior of the apartment was clean and tidy, even Hiei could tell that the furniture was old and not of good quality.

"Living as a human is hard, Hiei," Botan answered as she began scooping out a tin of cat food into a bowl. "It's not like in demon world, where you get rewarded for being strong. Here you have to be skilled and you have to earn money through a regular job, and you have to pay bills and taxes."

"We have jobs, bills and taxes in demon world too," Hiei snapped, feeling as though she was belittling his culture. "But that doesn't explain why that idiot lives like this when he doesn't have to."

"He doesn't have any other choice, Hiei," Botan insisted. "He could move into Genkai's temple with me and Yukina, but he feels that isn't appropriate until Yukina agrees to… Well, you know… And he has the shared expense of keeping the temple as it is. Genkai made a lot of money as a mentor, but we don't have that option. None of us are wealthy, and the cost of keeping that place is much higher than you might think."

"I don't understand."

"I know you don't."

Hiei glared at Botan as she placed down a bowl piled high with food, sliding it towards the already morbidly obese, wire-haired cat that was stinking out the apartment.

"Now you don't understand," he told her.

"I don't understand you," she replied. "I thought I did once. I thought I knew your heart. I never thought I could be so wrong about someone."

"Not that line again…" Hiei groaned.

"What?"

"Nothing. Let's just get out of here."

Botan nodded and Hiei picked his way past the feasting cat to the front door, gladly leaving the pitiful hovel that was Kuwabara's home in this strange and decidedly askew reality. He had seen enough to know what he had to do, but unfortunately he had also seen enough to become embittered about the paradise reality.

As they walked back to the temple in silence, Hiei decided that he was going to do to the Botan of this reality what the Hiei of this reality had already done to her: he was going to give up on her. He was also going to tell Yukina that he was her brother and that she should be with Kuwabara, because that way he would get the answer to his question about whether or not Kuwabara was using her for her tears in paradise.

* * *

Hiei took Yukina out to the gardens of the temple, which were not quite as picturesque as they were in the paradise reality for some inexplicable reason. He had no real idea what was the "right" way to tell Yukina that they were siblings – if indeed there was a "right" way to tell her at all – and he wished that he knew how that other Hiei from the paradise reality had done it.

Hiei really hated that other Hiei, increasingly so as time went by.

"I have to talk to you about your brother," he began.

"Oh," Yukina said softly.

"I can't explain why I didn't tell you before, but…"

Hiei took both hiruiseki from around his neck and held them out in front of Yukina.

"I'm your brother," he said.

Direct and to the point, he felt that it was a fair way to approach the matter. She looked at the two stones for a long time before moving her eyes to his.

"I always thought that you might be," she said. "I just wanted you to tell me yourself."

"Well now I've told you, so just take your stone back," he replied.

She nodded and gently pulled her own hiruiseki from his fingers.

"And now that you know, I also want to say that you should…"

Hiei paused, swallowing back his pride and his better judgement before continuing.

"You should be with Kuwabara," he said, his tone almost mechanical. "I approve of him."

"Really?" she asked, finally managing a smile.

"Yes," he lied.

Hiei did not approve of Kuwabara in any context, least of all with his sister when he suspected that he was going to use her to become rich, but he had to find out if that would definitely happen if the two of them got together and so he put his emotions and morals to one side and continued with his experiment. He had been unsure about this "near miss" reality, but now he had made up his mind that this reality, whilst better than most of the others had visited, was no more important than any of the others, and so his actions there were meaningless. The only reality that he cared about was the paradise one and he had lost all patience for all of the others, including his own.

"I don't know what to say!" Yukina said, her eyes watering over.

"Don't cry," he sharply warned her. "Don't shed tears. I don't want you to be upset and I don't want you producing hirui stones."

She nodded and pursed her lips, obviously trying to hold back her emotions.

"Can I call you brother?" she asked.

"…If you want to," he replied.

She nodded and made to hug him but he moved out of her reach: he was still not sure that he was ready for that, false reality or not. Also he felt slightly guilty accepting her affection since he was just using her as part of a selfish experiment.

"I have some things I have to do," he said. "I may be gone some time."

"But you will come back and visit?" she asked.

"…Sure."

Hiei took off then, not wishing to prolong the moment. The first thing he intended to do was to return to demon world and try to find out more about what had happened the day he had taken Botan there and why it had made him leave her, and he hoped that once he had found his answers enough time would have passed in the living world that he could go back and check on how Kuwabara was treating Yukina. He remembered that Shuichi had said that his actions had the least affect on Kuwabara – so if he could turn whiny Kuwabara into paradise Kuwabara, that must mean that he could fix anyone and anything else.

Though fixing things was still not Hiei's desired way of changing his life. He still just wanted to get back to the paradise reality where everything was the way it was meant to be. He considered what he had learned from the other realities to have been a useful education in how that other Hiei from the paradise reality had come about, and learning what he had, Hiei would now find it easier to replace that other Hiei in paradise, because now he had a better understanding of what he had said and done to get to where he was.

Back in demon world everything looked the same as it did in paradise demon world. It was ironic to Hiei that, with the exception of Hitoshi and the war in demon world, nothing else that happened there and nobody else's life there was affected by his actions in any of the other realities. He supposed that Mukuro's life had been different in the reality where they had been lovers, but other than that one instance, nothing about Mukuro or anyone else in her territory was different. His actions, Hiei thought wryly, had a bigger and more consistent impact on the humans in living world and the spirits in spirit world.

Hiei moved around the training yard outside Mukuro's fortress and saw no differences, he spied on the border patrol guards and saw no differences and eventually he went to the administration block to check on the miserable political officers in the unlikely event that any of them might be different. He walked casually through their midst, pretending that he belonged there, but saw nothing out of the ordinary: until he once more found himself confronted by Hitoshi.

"Hiei!" the ambassador greeted him. "What are you doing up here?"

Hiei slowly ran his eyes over Hitoshi. Something was different about him, but as Hiei had never wasted his time taking a good look at him before, he could not immediately tell what it was.

"Come to learn the trade?" Hitoshi joked.

"I tried that already," Hiei replied. "I don't like it."

"Yes, you made that perfectly clear."

Hiei distinctly saw something dark flit across Hitoshi's eyes, but in the true nature of a dissembler, he hid it well.

"Recovered from your fall yesterday?" he asked.

"You've changed here somehow," Hiei said, ignoring Hitoshi's question. "You look different."

Hitoshi slowly shook his head.

"You've changed physically," Hiei added. "Why is that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Hitoshi replied.

"You definitely don't look the same as you used to," Hiei insisted.

"He used to have a tail," another officer called over to him. "But then you cut it off, remember?"

Hiei stiffened, leaning to one side in an attempt to look for Hitoshi's elusive tail.

"Is that true?" he asked. "Did I cut off your tail?"

"You don't remember?" Hitoshi asked, his tone faintly bitter.

"Remind me," Hiei replied, meeting his eyes.

"You gave me the choice of losing my tongue or my tail," Hitoshi answered. "I chose my tail because I need my tongue to do my job."

That did sound like something that he would say and do, Hiei thought. He had often threatened others with amputation, and tongues and tails were usually his favourite things to remove, as both left wounds that spurted blood in a most delightfully offensive manner.

"Well you probably deserved it," Hiei concluded. "You do piss me off a lot."

"I was trying to help you," Hitoshi said.

"Hn, I can't imagine that," Hiei snorted.

"I helped you once before, and you were the one who asked me to help you again. The fact that you didn't like what I told you was no reflection on me, it was an indication of how insecure you are."

Hiei's eyebrows shot upwards against his will in his surprise and he heard several chairs scraping back at once as the other demons in the room began trying to slink away without his noticing.

"You've never helped me with anything," Hiei said.

"I helped you get what you wanted," Hitoshi corrected him.

"No," Hiei said, shaking his head. "I don't remember that."

"I do," Hitoshi insisted. "I remember you coming here when you were covered in scars from heroically rescuing your ferry girl, complaining that you had asked her to marry you and she said no."

Hiei paused. That sounded familiar. In the "scarface" reality, he was sure that someone had told him he had returned to demon world after Botan refused to marry him and that he had gone on a killing spree, taking many lives, including Hitoshi's: though obviously not so in this or the paradise reality.

"I remember that," Hiei said carefully. "I was furious."

"Yes, you were swinging your sword around like an axe," Hitoshi said. "You asked me how I wanted to die, by a stab or a slice, and I told you that if you spared me I would help you. Which I did. I helped you get the woman, though now I wonder why I bothered. You came to me for advice when you wanted to let her know how you felt about her, and you didn't like what I told you, so you cut off my tail, and instead of taking my advice, you did the exact opposite and took the girl here to see Mukuro, who of course hated her as I told you she would."

This was getting beyond ridiculous, Hiei thought to himself. That other Hiei was clearly insane to have taken help and advice from Hitoshi, but if that was how he had managed to marry Botan, it proved beyond all doubt that Hiei would never be able to get any Botan from any other reality, because only in the paradise reality had he let Hitoshi live and listened to his advice.

"What did you tell me to do instead?" Hiei asked

"I don't want to lose my tongue now too," Hitoshi flatly replied.

Hiei unhooked his sword from his belt and threw it at Hitoshi's feet.

"What did you tell me to do instead?" he asked again.

Hitoshi looked down at Hiei's sword for a long time before eventually giving a small nod and continuing to answer him.

"I told you to go and talk to the girl. I told you to actually listen to what her concerns were and to respond to them. She had started turning against spirit world for you and she just wanted to know that you would support her. I tried to offer you help in how to express yourself to her and you lost your temper and cut off my tail. Mukuro was furious at what you'd done and when you showed up with your ferry girl fiancée she was in mood to deal with her."

"In paradise, I decided to listen to do what you told me to do," Hiei said quietly. "And I waited for a better time to confront Mukuro about it."

"…What?"

Hiei turned away from Hitoshi and started to leave again, ignoring the way the other politicians yelped and leapt out of his path. By Shuichi's logic, taking Hitoshi's advice had been a good decision, and yet by Hiei's logic is seemed like the most stupid decision he could possibly have made.

Hiei realised then that he could never be and would never be that other Hiei.

* * *

After his insightful conversation with Hitoshi, Hiei widened his wound to prolong his stay in "near miss" reality and then spent four days in demon world, checking around for any other major changes that might be useful to learn about – but found none. After this time he returned to the living world, where he found several unpleasant things awaiting him, the first one being Koenma and a strange spirit with wild hair and crazy eyes.

As Hiei approached the old lady's temple he saw Botan, Kurama, Koenma and the crazy spirit standing just outside the porch having a hushed conversation about something that quickly ended when the crazy spirit spotted Hiei and she began making panicked hand gestures at Koenma. As he got closer, Hiei could sense that the atmosphere had been tense before he had arrived – probably because this was a reality where Botan had turned on Koenma and he had cast her out of spirit world indefinitely and so their relationship was likely to be strained at best – but everyone seemed to get even tenser as Hiei joined them.

"What are you doing here?" he asked Koenma, who was, of course, in his adult form.

"Investigating something," Koenma cryptically replied.

"What sort of something?" Hiei asked.

"The guardian of fate," Koenma began, holding out a hand towards the wild woman at his side. "Has reported a disturbance in the natural flow of life around here lately, and I came to investigate. I'm looking for someone who maybe doesn't belong here and may be acting out of character."

Hiei shrugged.

"I hear you told Yukina that you are her brother," Koenma continued. "And that you were happy for her to become Kuwabara's lover. And you broke into Kuwabara's place of work, destroyed a project he was working on, broke his desk and consequently he was fired from his job and will shortly be evicted from his apartment because he's now unable to pay his rent."

Hiei's face dropped.

"Kuwabara has had to take part-time job delivering takeaway orders for Yukimura Restaurant," Botan added quietly. "He had his first round last night and people kept taking their orders from him without paying him. He can't afford to live like that. And now that he isn't earning a full-time salary, the rest of us are having to contribute more towards the costs of the upkeep of the temple, and we're all struggling, especially me."

Hiei shook his head.

"So, apart from ruining Kuwabara's life and Botan's life and telling Yukina that you are her brother – even though you said that you never would – have you been up to anything else unusual lately, Hiei?" Koenma asked him.

"It's wrong," Hiei said quietly. "He was supposed get more money, not less, after I told Yukina."

The others all gave him strange looks but Hiei ignored them.

"Hiei, Koenma is here because he suspects that someone has somehow managed to interfere with fate," Kurama said. "He thinks that one of us might be involved, and your behaviour lately has been slightly odd. Can you explain yourself?"

Hiei heard what Kurama had said but he did not bother giving it any consideration. He was far more confused about Kuwabara: surely now that he had lost his job and was about to lose his apartment too he would start forcing Yukina to cry so that he could profit from her tear-gems?

"Where is Kuwabara?" he asked, looking around the others.

"He's packing his bags and emptying his apartment," Kurama answered. "I was on my way there to help him."

"I'll come with you," Hiei immediately responded.

"You see, it's comments like that we're talking about over here," Koenma said. "The Hiei we know would never volunteer to help Kuwabara pack his bags, especially not if it was so that he could move in with Yukina."

"Let's go," Hiei said to Kurama.

Kurama looked at Koenma and shrugged slightly.

"Kuwabara does need our help at this time," he said. "We should go."

"Fine," Koenma said, sounding anything but fine.

Kurama nodded at Hiei and then took off in a direction contrary to the one Hiei had been expecting him to take. He paused, but only briefly, before hurrying after him, catching up to him as he rounded the temple to a paved area that led onwards to a long, winding, sloping road away from the temple grounds.

"I'm taking my car so that we can pack the larger items into it," Kurama explained.

Hiei stopped as Kurama started to climb into a small, dark-coloured car. It was quite shiny, but it was barely half the size of the car paradise Kuwabara had owned and nowhere near as attractive. Hiei got into the front passenger seat and looked around the plainer interior of the car before turning questioningly to Kurama.

"How many hiruiseki would you have to sell to buy a car like this?" he asked.

Kurama frowned at him as he started the engine.

"That's an odd question," he commented.

"Just answer it," Hiei snapped impatiently.

"Alright then, two," Kurama replied.

"I see… What about a bigger car? How many hiruiseki would you need for that?"

"Hiei, are you feeling alright? Koenma came here because of you, after all. He suspects you of having somehow split dimensions – he thinks you've been abusing Kuwabara's powers to change reality somehow. I thought he was just confused because you had returned here recently and you were acting unlike yourself."

"…How many?"

Kurama gave Hiei a dark look and for a long time the two of them sat in silence. Hiei had an increasingly bad feeling about what was going on around him: it seemed like the decisions he was making and the things he was doing in this reality were causing more problems than they were solving. He was distracted by his own confusion until he realised that the car had stopped and they appeared to be just waiting in a ridiculously long queue of cars for apparently nothing.

"I'm bored," he said.

"The traffic is always busy in this part of the city," Kurama replied. "But perhaps while we are waiting you could explain to me why you've been acting strangely lately."

"I don't know what you mean," Hiei lied.

"Well, for a start, I never thought that you would ever tell Yukina that you were her brother," Kurama said.

"You always told me that I should tell her."

"But I never thought that you would. You always insisted that you would never tell her and that was the way it was meant to be. What changed your mind? And so suddenly?"

Hiei started to make an excuse but his voice failed him partway through as he noticed something on the other side of the road.

"That car," he said, pointing over the large, shiny white car edging towards them in a queue heading in the opposite direction at the other side of the road.

"The white one?" Kurama asked.

"Yes," Hiei said. "How many hiruiseki would that cost?"

"A lot," Kurama flatly replied. "That's a Lexus CS, Hiei, that car must be worth between 10 and 15 million Yen – which, to you, is more money than most humans earn in four years of working full-time."

"It's very expensive then, yes?"

"Yes. That's why it's the only one you can see on the road. Only a rich person would drive a car like that."

"But someone who was making my sister cry and selling her tears could afford a car like that?"

Kurama gave Hiei another strange look, but Hiei had all the answers he needed. Obviously Kuwabara was using Yukina for her tears in the paradise reality. And as that was true, he would do it in this reality too now that she was his lover and he had lost his job, his home and what little money he had owned before then.

* * *

Hiei spent the next several days discreetly following Kuwabara. It was not something he was proud of, but he had to know what would happen to him. He watched the idiot go out on a bicycle and deliver food orders to people's houses, he watched him try to play with the fat old cat and he watched him eat dinner by candle-light with Yukina. And through it all, Yukina did not cry once, and Kuwabara made no attempt to upset her.

Botan, Kurama, Yusuke and Keiko had hushed conversations about the cost of keeping the temple without Kuwabara's contributions and Hiei started to see seeds of resentment being sown when Kuwabara failed to get another, better, job. Kuwabara himself seemed reasonably happy, though maybe not so much so when he was out on the bicycle delivering the food orders, and Yukina seemed slightly happier, but mostly worried about Kuwabara. They had not turned into the paradise versions of themselves, but they had not exactly remained as they were before, either.

Hiei had expected them to become their paradise selves after he told Yukina who he was and gave her his approval to be with Kuwabara – after all, what other decision could he possibly have made about anything that could have had any more of an impact on either of their lives? He had expected Kuwabara to become desperate and start making Yukina cry, but that moment never came. He became more miserable with his stupid new job and – by what Hiei had overheard the others saying – he began borrowing money from his sister to buy food for himself, Yukina and the fat old cat.

But still they did not become their paradise selves, and so Hiei did the only other thing that he could: he returned to demon world, jumped into a healing chamber and shortly returned to his own reality, where, as he had always feared might be the case, he found himself fully immersed in a healing chamber without any breathing apparatus, and consequently had to blast his way out of the thing.

Hiei ignored the complaints he got from the medics and went straight to Mukuro's office, where she greeted him with an expectant look that reminded him that he had just messed up again.

"You were gone for almost two weeks," she said. "You found a reality with no war?"

"…Yes," he said slowly. "But I didn't find out any details about it."

She groaned and bared her teeth in a way that warned Hiei he might soon be back in a healing chamber.

"What happens to those other realities?" he asked her.

"What?" she echoed.

"The other realities," he said. "After I leave them, what happens to them? Do they carry on? If I change one of them, does it carry on like that after I come back here?"

"Why do you care?"

Hiei could not answer that honestly because he was not really sure himself why he cared.

"I did some things in the last reality that I maybe shouldn't have," he eventually said.

"Well it doesn't matter, because you'll always come back here when your wound heals anyway," Mukuro replied. "…Or in this case, when you eventually let it heal."

"What if I never let it heal?" he asked.

"Then you would never come back. But be serious Hiei, it would be impossible to keep it open for the rest of your life, not to mention impractical living with a hole in your gut all the time."

Hiei nodded.

"Am I the only one who determines what the alternate realities will be like?" he asked.

"I can only send you to alternate realities that you created with your own decisions, yes," she replied.

Hiei nodded again.

"Send me away again," he said. "But this time, try to get it right."

"If I sent you to a reality where there was no war then I "got it right" the last time!" Mukuro snapped back. "Hiei, you need to start taking this a little more seriously! You do realise that if you can't get the answers I need, the other plan involves sacrificing your life?"

"It's not going to come to that because you're going to send me back," Hiei stubbornly replied.

"I can't guarantee where you'll go, I don't know what sort of decisions you've made in your life!"

Hiei thought about arguing that she knew what sort of decisions he had made in his life better than anyone since she had – against his will – read his innermost thoughts after he had almost died defeating Shigure to become her right-hand man, but he decided not to bother correcting her.

"We're only doing this four times more, including now," she said, drawing back her hands and charging her attack.

"Not in here!" Hiei yelled, running out of her office.

The last thing he wanted was to land up back in the "sex slave" reality, he thought. He got as far as the door before he felt her attack hit him in the small of the back and he was sent hurtling through her closed office door, cursing her name for doing something as despicable as strike him when his back was turned – even though it was a non-aggressive hit. As usual he was thrown through a wall and into another room before he slowed to a halt, once more in another reality that he hoped was the one he sought, and if not, he would have to try to figure out why not before he could move on to where he was supposed to be.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei struggles to find paradise, and Mukuro remains true to her word and counts down his remaining chances. Desperate not to give up yet, Hiei takes a gamble on something he finds in another dimension and causes total chaos when his gambit fails drastically. **Chapter 20 – Tide of Chaos**


	20. Tide of Chaos

**Recap:** Hiei decided not to stay in "near miss" reality, but he first of all conducted a little experiment with Yukina and Kuwabara to test if they would turn into their paradise selves and if Kuwabara was using Yukina for her tears – and neither proved true, leaving him even more confused than before. He returned to his own reality and Mukuro sent him away again on attempt number 7 of 10.

* * *

 **Chapter 20: Tide of Chaos**

Hiei dragged himself to his feet and looked around the room he had landed in. Mukuro was there, along with two of her elite soldiers, and they were all sat around a table, looking at a board covered in little figures.

"Come to join us in a strategy meeting, Hiei?" Mukuro asked him sarcastically.

"Strategy meeting?" Hiei echoed. "Strategy for the war? Strategy to fight against Kurama and Yusuke?"

"…What else would we hold a strategy meeting about?" she asked.

"Fuck," Hiei replied.

He walked back across the room and out through the hole he had created in the wall. If his last visit to another reality had taught him anything it was that nothing short of paradise was good enough, and this reality was, quite obviously, not paradise. As he made his way down to a healing chamber Hiei checked himself over to be sure that his assumptions were correct: he had two hiruiseki around his neck, no wedding ring and he was dressed in his usual clothing. A quick check out of a window showed that the border patrol road was overgrown and there were signs of conflict on the horizon, meaning that this was a reality Hiei did not want to even bother learning anything about.

Instead, he took himself down to the healing chambers and forced a medic to put him into one, where, within a few hours, he was once more back in his own reality, almost drowning and forced to burst his way out of the chamber. As he was once more berated by a medic for destroying precious and expensive medical equipment, Hiei looked back at the two chambers he had destroyed that day, mentally noting their position so that he could be sure to be loaded into one of them in another reality if he found himself again in the wrong place.

But that was not going to happen, he told himself as he darted back up to Mukuro's office. He was going to reach paradise on this next turn, and to be absolutely sure of it he was going to make Mukuro send him back from the basement again. His plan there had not worked the first time, but he was confident that it would work a second time, and so he burst into Mukuro's office, interrupting a meeting she was holding with the small handful of remaining S class demons she had at her fortress.

"Back already, Hiei?" she asked, looking genuinely surprised to see him. "Well at least now you understand what I meant by "no fucking about". I assume demon world was at war in the reality you arrived in?"

"Yes, so you better try again," Hiei replied. "But not here. Down in the basement."

"It doesn't really make any difference where–" she began.

"In the basement," Hiei interrupted her.

He turned and sped off, travelling all the way down to the gloomy basement and positioning himself in the area he had been in the first time Mukuro had used her attack on him. He was not taking any more chances, and he had noticed that when he had started his journeys across realities from Mukuro's office he had always ended up somewhere messed up: the reality where he was Keiko's lover and pretending to be human, the reality where he was Mukuro's lover and most recently a reality that was little different from his own. He started to grow agitated when Mukuro did not appear, and he thought that she was probably deliberately moving slowly to anger him. She was probably trying to lure him into doing something irrational out of impatience so that she could give him another lecture on his immaturity when she caught him in the act.

Hiei paused. Mukuro had lectured him on his immaturity before she had sent him to paradise, and she had lectured him on his immaturity before she had sent him to the near miss reality: and he had been in completely different locations in each instance.

Perhaps it was not the location that was important, but rather Mukuro's state of mind when she launched the attack – which, in fact, made a lot more sense. Hiei had always thought that she ought to be able to have at least some degree of influence over where she sent him, and perhaps she did without even knowing it. Perhaps her own mood and frame of mind affected where he went, and maybe if he could get her into the same frame of mind she had been in the first time she had attacked him then he would finally get back to paradise.

"It doesn't matter where we do this, you know," Mukuro said as she joined him in the basement.

Hiei smirked to himself and ran at one of the stone pillars, kicking it down into a pile of rubble.

"What was that for?" she asked, frowning in confusion.

"I'm so bored waiting for you to show me your little trick," he replied, remembering that, in both previous instances where she had sent him to paradise and near miss, he had called her Dividing Realities a "trick".

"So you decided to break something?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

"That's a little bit childish, Hiei."

"Hn, don't speak to me like I'm a child."

"Then don't act like one!"

"Just get on with it."

"Fine."

"And be sure to hit me really hard."

Mukuro gave Hiei a questioning look, but she charged her attack regardless and Hiei tensed himself in anticipation. He was sure that there must be some sort of link between how, where or when she attacked him and which reality he was sent to – some sort of common denominator, he thought dryly – and he was determined to find out what it was.

"Third last time, make it count," she reminded him before launching her attack.

Hiei barely paid her words any attention. He did not need to pay any attention to her words because he already knew that he was running out of "shots" at reaching paradise, but he was confident that he was close to figuring out the secret to getting there – if he had not already figured it out with his latest attempt. And being attacked in the middle of the basement floor had the added bonus of there being nothing for him to collide with or fall from as he was thrown backwards, instead he simply flew back and then skidded along the ground a little.

As he dragged himself to his feet, Hiei noted that Mukuro had not hit him quite so hard this time – which would mean he would need to widen the wound immediately if he was home – and he noticed that he was alone in the basement, which most likely meant that he was in the wrong place, as the basement was usually in use. But, he reminded himself, the basement had been empty in the paradise reality when he had first arrived there, so there was still hope.

Hiei looked down at himself. He was wearing exactly the same clothes, down to the ripped shirt, and the scabbard at his hip was empty: which seemed to indicate that he had not gone to another reality at all. He touched a hand to his chest and felt two hiruiseki and he looked down at his hand as saw no wedding ring. He looked down at his abdomen and saw a lesser but still distinct cross-shaped wound, and yet, apart from Mukuro's disappearance from the basement, everything seemed to be exactly the same as it was in his own reality.

Confused and rapidly becoming angry he ran out of the basement in search of Mukuro or anyone who might be able to explain what was going on. He felt cheated and he felt like someone, somewhere, was mocking him, as clearly something had gone wrong. He briefly worried that Mukuro's attack had stopped working on him: maybe she had only performed it a limited number of times on the others before him because, after several shots, it became ineffective. Maybe his body had developed an immunity to it.

Hiei ran faster.

He ran up a spiral staircase, which wound around the interior of a tower quite tightly, and at the speed he travelled and with his senses dulled in his anger, he did not sense or see the person ahead of him until it was too late, and he promptly ran right into the person's back, and together they fell down, rolling down a few steps before righting themselves.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

Hiei turned at the sound of the voice yelling at him, relieved that it was Mukuro but also more angered than before: how dare she yell at him like that? She was the one who had just cheated him out of something, after all.

"You're the one who needs to answer some questions, idiot!" he snapped back at her. "Like why am I back here even though I've got this wound that's supposed to have sent me to another reality!"

"You are in another reality, because I stopped sending you away in this reality!" Mukuro yelled back.

They both faltered slightly and eyed each other over.

"What?" Hiei asked.

"You were in another reality for about two weeks, and when you eventually came back you asked me to stop sending you away," Mukuro replied. "You asked if the other realities carried on after you left them, I told you that they did, and you said that you'd changed your mind."

"…What?"

Mukuro sighed.

"I sent you away six times," she said. "After you returned from the sixth attempt you asked me about the other realities and if they continued without you. I told you that they did and you said that you didn't want to go away again because nothing ever turned out the way you expected, and you were giving up trying… Which I assumed meant that you were giving up because the ferry girl wasn't interested in you rather than because you couldn't find a solution to the war, like you were supposed to be doing…"

"The sixth attempt?"

Hiei dropped a hand to his pocket, feeling the shape of a ball of paper there. He quickly retrieved it and opened it out onto the stairs, unsurprised to find that it looked different to the one he was carrying around in his own reality but surprised by the nature of the differences themselves. Unlike the chart Hiei was still carrying around in the norm reality, the one he was now looking at had more comments written on it against the different variations of people he had met in the different realities.

And, most significantly of all, it had a disturbingly depressing line of text written at one end of the page, clearly in Hiei's own handwriting.

"Anything I do only changes things back to be like norm reality, no matter what I try," he read aloud. "I will never return to paradise because only that other Hiei can live there."

"So I was right?" Mukuro asked. "You stopped the experiment because you realised that you can't use it to assimilate into another version of yourself and get the ferry girl?"

"I'm not trying to use anything to get the ferry girl!" Hiei shouted angrily, balling up the piece of paper and throwing it down the stairs. "I'm just trying to get back to where I'm supposed to be!"

"You're supposed to be in your own reality," Mukuro said. "The reason your reality came about was because you made it that way. You'll never assimilate yourself into the life of an alternate version of yourself because you'll never truly understand the mentality and history of that life, especially if you chose to stay in a reality brought about by a decision you made a long time ago: the differences are just too great."

"That doesn't make sense, you don't know what you're talking about and I am going back," Hiei said determinedly.

He started down the stairs again and Mukuro hurried after him, moving ahead of him and standing in his path to force him to stop his descent.

"Where are you going now?" she asked.

"To a healing chamber so that I can get back to a reality where you're still sending me away like you're supposed to be!" he snapped.

"Hiei, continuing to travel through realities in the hope that you can reach one you like and try to stay there is stupid," she said. "You made a good decision in this reality when you decided to stop and just accept things as they are here."

"A good decision…"

Hiei wanted to break something. He was sick of hearing people talk about good and bad decisions. And, as he thought more about it, he realised the full implications of what Mukuro had just said.

"I made a good decision here?" he asked her. "Are you telling me that me choosing to kill myself along with Kurama and Yusuke was a good decision?"

"Under the current circumstances, it was the best decision that you could have made," she flatly replied.

"You're wrong," he said, pushing past her and continuing down the stairs.

"If you want to learn anything from this reality, learn that you're wasting your time continuing this experiment," Mukuro called after him. "People are dying in this war, and the longer you take to come to your senses, the more lives will be needlessly lost."

Hiei heard what she had said and, on a deeper level, he understood the point she was trying to make: but he was not about to give up. He was determined to get back. He only had two more chances but he was hoping that he would only need to use one of them. Getting back to paradise was all that mattered to him any more, to the point that he was even willing to admit that it had turned into an obsession for him. He was willing to go to just about any lengths to get there, especially after visiting that near miss reality and seeing how disastrous things had turned when he had tried to interfere. That had been close to paradise and he had only done a few small things but in doing so he had pushed it towards becoming like the norm reality.

It was almost as though, no matter what he did, he would change any reality he lived in into the norm reality because that was the only reality that he truly belonged in, and if he did not remain in it, it would become his reality somewhere else: which was the conclusion the Hiei of his current reality had come to.

Hiei paused outside of a healing chamber to have a brief look around himself. He could see one of the two healing chambers he had destroyed, the other still in tact because the Hiei of this reality had not used it. Looking at it started to create a sickening feeling inside of him and a small, pessimistic and pitiful part of his brain wondered if the Hiei of this reality had, as Mukuro had said, been the one who had made the good decision.

But surely not every decision he had ever made had been a bad one, Hiei concluded, since some of his past decisions had included helping spirit world and therefore getting to know Yusuke and meeting Botan.

And with that thought Hiei began bullying a medic into putting him into the healing chamber that was broken in his own reality.

* * *

Hiei fell to the ground abruptly when he returned to his own reality – which he had partly been prepared for, as the healing chamber he had been in no longer existed in his own reality. There were no medics present to have seen his strange appearance and to consequently start complaining about it, which was something of a relief. And since the wound he had sustained had been less severe, he had healed quicker and returned in a shorter space of time, which was good because he was privately paranoid that the longer he took to get back to paradise, the more likely Mukuro was to stop sending him away because she was, as she had demonstrated in the reality he had just left, growing impatient with the length of time he was taking and she was keen to action her back-up plan for stopping the war.

Hiei started to head to her office but changed course halfway there, instead taking himself for a meal first. He wanted to sleep afterwards, but knowing that he only had two more chances at reaching paradise ahead of him he was clinging to the idea that he might reach his goal within the day, so he returned to Mukuro after his meal.

"Before we do this," he said to her as she made to start charging her attack. "Do you know for sure if how you're feeling or what you're thinking when you launch the attack doesn't affect where I get sent to?"

She dropped her hands to her sides.

"Hiei, that's a very complicated question," she said flatly. "And not even a relevant one."

"It is relevant," he said hurriedly, holding up a hand to stop her from just blasting him away to the wrong dimension. "Because I think your moods and thoughts affect where I go and the whole point of you sending me away is that you send me somewhere where demon world is at peace so that I can get you the answers you're looking for, so isn't it better that you send me to the right reality?"

"…As far as you and I are concerned, this reality is the only right one, Hiei," Mukuro said slowly. "I agree that it would be better if I could chose to send you to a reality where demon world is at peace, and that is what I'm trying to do, but as I've told you before, I have absolutely no influence over where you go or why. These alternate realities are yours, created by your decisions. If anyone controls where you go, it's you."

"…Are you saying that I need to be thinking the right way to go back to the right reality?" Hiei asked. "Maybe that's true, since we were having the same sort of conversation and thinking the same sort of things when you sent me to that near miss reality… But then when I tried to talk about the same things again today you sent me to that last reality that was hardly any different to this one at all…"

"Twice more Hiei. Then we move on to the next plan like we agreed."

"I never actually agreed to follow through with your other plan yet."

"If you have even a shred of dignity left in you, you will agree to follow through with it."

Hiei pulled a face at Mukuro but he doubted that she even saw it as she once more launched him into another reality and she disappeared from his sight. He was again thrown through walls as he had still been in her office when she had attacked him. He was less than pleased to be battered through the walls, but at the same time slightly relieved that he was still moving and had not been launched into the reality where he was tied up in Mukuro's office. As he came to a halt he silently wondered how many walls he had damaged in Mukuro's fortress across the various realities he had visited, and then it occurred to him that he did not actually care.

He stood up and looked about himself, finding that he was alone. He looked down and saw that he was not dressed unusually, and also that he still had two hirui stones around his neck and was missing a wedding ring from his finger, both of which provided strong evidence that he was not in paradise. He picked his way free of the rubble he had created and stepped out into the hallway beyond. He could not hear any activity nearby or sense the presence of anyone of any significance, which was how things had been at Mukuro's headquarters since the beginning of the war: again not a good sign.

Deciding to be sure before he took any action, Hiei ran to the nearest window overlooking the front yard, where he could almost immediately see that the border patrol roads were overgrown and the yard itself was devoid of the usual bustle of bodies moving in and around the fortress itself. It confirmed that he was not only not in paradise, but he was also in a reality where demon world was still at war, and so he was cut off from the living world and anyone outside of Mukuro's territory. He thought about finding someone else – anyone else – and attempting to find out what sort of reality this was, but he decided that doing so was just a waste of time that would be better spent healing himself and getting back to the norm reality where he could have Mukuro send him to the right place.

He was growing weary of visiting different dimensions and seeing how his decisions and actions had affected things around him, and he was ready to just go back to paradise and forget all about his other experiences.

And, he thought darkly as he started towards the medical wing, Mukuro was only going to give him one more chance to get back to paradise, so this time it had to work.

* * *

It was early evening by the time Hiei returned to Mukuro's office, the skies outside darkening, making the distant flashes of lightning and energy blasts from the fighting seem all the more striking by comparison. When he approached her desk, Hiei found that Mukuro looked as pissed off and pessimistic as he felt.

"Failed again?" she asked.

"I came straight back because I could see that demon world was still at war," he replied. "You need to try again."

"You understand that this is the last time we're trying this?" she asked. "So anything, no matter how small, that you can find out is paramount."

"…There's no exact reason why we can't do this more than ten times, right?"

Mukuro's face flinched slightly and she hesitated longer than seemed necessary before answering Hiei's question.

"People are dying in this war," she said. "I don't want to lose you too Hiei, but my primary loyalty is to my kingdom. I've worked a lifetime to make it as great and prosperous as it is, and I can't stand by and let it fall. You're my last hope, and you will be commemorated favourably for this as long as this kingdom stands."

"That's my legacy?" he asked. "To be remembered as the one who killed his former allies in the name of politics?"

"Hiei, I'm not any happier about this than you are," she replied. "I never wanted this, I did what I could to try to stop it from coming to this, but I've wasted too much time looking for a way out of this. The only way to fix this now is by taking direct action, by accepting responsibility and accepting that it will involve sacrifices I don't want to have to make. Sometimes, Hiei, you have to just cut your losses and move on."

Hiei nodded slowly, finding Mukuro's words strangely ironic: though he was not really sure why he felt that way. Maybe it was because she was talking about wasting time looking for an escape from her problems when she ought to be fixing them here and now, which was basically the advice Shuichi had given Hiei on his own life.

Damn that Shuichi, Hiei thought to himself.

"One last try?" Mukuro said, interrupting his thoughts.

"Location and thought don't make any difference?" he asked her.

"Nothing does," she replied. "It's completely random. The chances of you returning to one, very specific, reality are minute."

Hiei held out his arms at the sides of his body.

"Then just get on with it," he said.

He saw Mukuro visibly hesitate, a look of genuine concern on her face before she covered it behind a stern look and readied herself to attack again. He supposed that she did not really want to sacrifice his life and that she was only doing what she thought was best for her kingdom – her Dividing Realities had been developed and implemented for the sake of her kingdom and he had to concede that she was a worthy ruler.

But that did not change his desire to get back to paradise and stay there indefinitely.

Mukuro wished him luck as she launched her attack, the slightly strained tone of her voice telling Hiei that she was genuinely concerned and she did really mean her well-wishing. If what she had said about his destination being completely random was true, Hiei supposed that he would need all the luck he could get – though he had never really had much good luck in his life. Kurama had once joked that Hiei's life was full of luck, just unfortunately it had all been bad luck. Hiei had not really cared though, because he had worked all the harder to get to where he had: and now he found himself relying on luck and wishing that he was a lucky man.

Again he had a rough landing as he arrived in another dimension and again he had to pull himself out of a pile of rubble. He staggered along the hallway, the vague impression that he should not have taken four serious blows to the gut in one day passing over him – even with healing, he had still been tender and taking hit after hit had left him in more pain than he would ever openly admit to: especially since the wound he currently had did not look terribly severe. He was dressed in clothes he would typically wear, and as he reached the window and looked outside he could see, even against the fading light of nightfall, that the border patrol route was open and in use, and the yard was a veritable hive of activity: both very good signs.

Hiei moved away from the window and started down a flight of stairs, checking himself over as he went. He was not wearing a wedding ring and he still had two hiruiseki around his neck, and those were bad signs, both clearly indicative that he was not in paradise. He already knew that another "near miss" reality would not be good enough for what he wanted, but he persevered in the off-chance that what he was wearing was just a mistake somehow.

At the bottom of the stairs, Hiei was suddenly confronted by something that quickly erased any hope from his mind: he was standing face-to-face with Hitoshi, and the ambassador was missing his tail and most of his left arm.

"Did I do that to you?" Hiei asked him quietly.

"You know you did," Hitoshi replied.

Hiei sighed.

"I don't suppose you would know if I have a wife and a son?" he asked.

"No, you don't," Hitoshi replied. "Thankfully."

Hiei bit back a vicious response as it occurred to him that, for what he and his various alternate selves had done to Hitoshi and his various alternate selves, he deserved what Hitoshi had just said to him.

"Am I banned from the living world?" he tried.

"No, but you rarely go there," Hitoshi replied. "What made you think that you were banned?"

"I let a ferry girl die," Hiei said slowly.

"I didn't know about that. Can't say that I'm surprised though…"

Hiei sighed again, and again he held back an aggressive reply.

"When Enki died," he began. "There was one demon who objected to the division of demon world."

"Yes, that's right," Hitoshi replied. "I'm surprised at you knowing or even caring about that though. You always hated politics."

"I was involved in capturing him," Hiei pointed out.

"…No you weren't," Hitoshi said. "Yusuke Urameshi caught him. He asked for your assistance but you refused."

"Oh fuck…" Hiei sighed.

So this was the reality where he had not even gone on the mission where he had encountered the rock monster: which made it much like the reality where he had chosen to be Mukuro's lover and slightly similar to the reality where he had chosen to be Keiko's lover. He did not want to think that he might be in either of those places, but he did wonder what had become of Botan. If she had never been caught by the rock monster then he had never had to either rescue or abandon her, which meant that there was hope that she would not be terrified of him or hateful towards him.

Maybe this reality could work for him after all.

"You could probably get those regenerated," Hiei suggested to Hitoshi.

"So you can cut them off again?" he echoed. "No thanks."

Hiei shrugged as the ambassador marched off. He did not really care what happened to Hitoshi now, since he had obviously served his purpose in this reality by stopping the war. Hiei continued out onto the border patrol road, crossing over it to a quieter patch of land, where he paused to check on everyone else's situation in this reality. He started with Yukina, mainly to be sure that she was not somehow back in the ice village. He soon found her in the old lady's temple, sat at a table with two plates of dinner in front of her looking slightly disappointed: obviously waiting for Kuwabara, Hiei thought. He then sought out Kuwabara, simply to find out where he was that he had left Yukina waiting, and unsurprisingly found him sat at the same desk he was always sat at, wearing the same terrible suit and sporting the same too-short haircut and decidedly unattractive beard.

Hiei refocused his mind and sought out Kurama, finding him with Maya, walking around their shop – which was obviously closed for the night – watering plants. That was a good thing, Hiei thought, because that meant that at least Kurama and Maya were as they should be. He then searched out Yusuke and found him sat at a table inside Yukimura Restaurant with Keiko and those two people Hiei had to assume where Keiko's parents. Again that was good, since Yusuke was looking like his former self and Keiko looked a lot more relaxed.

Hiei then sought out Botan. She took a little longer to pinpoint, mostly because there was a slight change in her energy pattern: and when he saw where she was, Hiei could understand why. Apparently, in this reality, Botan had already completed her ten year human trial and she was living as Koenma's wife. The sight of the two of them cuddled up in bed together had been about the last image that Hiei had wanted to see, especially because they had looked so happy, sleeping with smiles on their faces.

Hiei closed his jagan eye and swallowed hard. He had two choices: heal himself and return to the norm reality and face his fate there or go to spirit world, kill Koenma and usurp his position as Botan's lover.

Hiei lifted up his shirt and looked down at the bloody wound he bore. It would probably be healed after a few hours in a healing chamber, he thought. It was also quite easily concealed, he thought. He pulled his shirt down again, and saw no visible sign of the wound through it, thanks to the fact that his shirt was black and the blood that had soaked into it was barely detectable. Visibly he could pass himself off as being unharmed, but he could smell the blood himself so looking alright was not going to be enough if Hiei wanted to test out his possible third choice in his current, and dire situation.

Hiei ran back to the fortress and up to his own chambers by the least frequented route he could think of, hurriedly locking himself into his room and emptying out drawers and cupboards in a bid to find what he sought. He knew that he was probably just wasting effort as everything ought to be in the same place as it was in his room in his own reality, but he did not want to take any chances. He took off his shirt and used it to wipe the excess blood from his wound before collecting a fresh roll of bandages he normally reserved for use on his arm. He quickly bandaged up his mid-section until there was no trace of blood soaking through and then he pulled on a clean shirt and ran off again in search of Mukuro. He was not sure that his act would fool her, but it was a chance he had to take – in fact, it was the only chance he had left of finding paradise, and so doubting it was not an option.

Despite not usually being lucky, Hiei was rather lucky that night as he found Mukuro in her office sharing a drink with a few of her senior staff. Hiei burst his way in and nodded at anyone who greeted him by name before turning his attention fully to Mukuro.

"I need to talk to you urgently," he said.

"Can't it wait until morning?" she asked.

"No, it's urgent," Hiei insisted.

"Fine, what is it?" she sighed.

"It's confidential."

Hiei glanced around the others, but none of them looked perturbed by his announcement, nor did any of them make any effort to leave.

"You can talk, we're all friends in here," Mukuro assured him.

"Hn," Hiei grunted involuntarily: the men sat around Mukuro were hardly his friends, since he recognised them by sight only, and had no clue about what their names might be. "I want to see your Dividing Realities attack."

Mukuro's face dropped and she looked around the table nervously.

"My what?" she asked, turning back to Hiei.

"The Dividing Realities," he replied. "I want to see it. Use it on me. Now."

Mukuro nodded at the others and made a dismissive hand gesture, and they all began finishing their drinks and rising from their seats. She stood up herself and moved towards Hiei, gripping his arm and pulling him into a corner of the room.

"How did you find out about that?" she whispered to him. "That's something I'm still developing, I never intended to tell you until I had perfected it."

"You haven't perfected it?" Hiei asked.

"No," she replied.

"What stage is it at? Can you send me to another reality or not?"

"I can send you to another reality, but I can't stop the process. I don't even know if you would be able to come back here. It's too dangerous. I wouldn't risk using it on you yet."

"I don't give a fuck how dangerous you think it is. If it works, if it sends me to another dimension, then that's all I need to know. Use it on me right now."

Mukuro watched the last of the others leave the room before shaking her head at Hiei.

"It's far too risky," she insisted. "This is one of those situations where you need to think before you act, Hiei."

"Stop talking to me like I'm a child!" he snapped. "Use the move on me or die!"

Hiei had his sword pointed at Mukuro's throat before he even realised what he was doing. He did not really intend to kill her – though as this was not the Mukuro from paradise or his own reality, he thought that he probably could – since the Mukuro of the norm reality would not do it any more, he needed this Mukuro alive to send him to another reality.

"I don't think you fully appreciate what's at stake here," she said as she pinched the tip of his sword between her thumb and forefinger and pushing the point away from herself. "What you're asking me to do is very dangerous."

"I welcome the danger," he growled. "Now do it!"

She looked thoughtful for several seconds before slowly shaking her head.

"It would be a very bad idea–"

"I don't care! One more bad decision isn't going to make things any worse for me now!"

"Fine, have it your way. But don't say that I didn't warn you."

Mukuro began charging her attack and Hiei smiled. This was perfect, he thought to himself. If she got it wrong somehow, he could just find the Mukuro of the reality she sent him to and get her to try again. He almost felt stupid for not having thought of it before: all that time he had wasted healing himself and going back to the worst reality of them all – his own – he could have spent having the alternate Mukuro's try to get him back to where he was meant to be: paradise.

Despite knowing that taking another hit from Mukuro's newest attack on his still raw abdomen would not be a painless experience, Hiei was still shocked at just how badly it did hurt when her attack hit him. He went through the wall of her office but he did not even feel the impact or the floor in the hallway outside as he skidded along it. His senses were all numbed except his eyesight as he eventually came to rest in a corner of another room. His breathing had become fast and shallow and every inflation of his lungs made his double wound ache. He lay that way for sometime, only starting to move when he realised that Mukuro was standing over him and talking at him. He could not hear her as his sense of hearing was apparently still disabled as his body reeled from the damage it had taken. She grabbed his arms and started to pull him to his feet, but suddenly she vanished and he fell back down the ground, his ears momentarily filling with a high-pitched whine before clearing and his hearing then returned to him.

All Hiei could hear was the sound of his own breath, ragged and wheezy, and a look around the room told him that he was completely alone. He wondered if he had imagined Mukuro's presence there in his momentary madness from his injuries. He unhooked his sword from his hip and pulled it from its sheath, holding his sword in one hand and the sheath in the other, he stabbed both items into the ground, using them to pull himself to his feet. He leaned his weight on them for some time, his arms and legs shaking, his body sweating all over. Once he felt that he could trust his legs to support his weight he pulled his sword and sheath from the ground and raised them up, starting to slide the sword back into the sheath: but partway through his task, both items vanished from his hands and suddenly the sword was sheathed and at his hip once more.

Hiei looked down at it in confusion for several minutes before looking around himself curiously. He got the feeling that something very bad was happening and that he was not going to enjoy finding out what it was. He started to moved forwards, stopping again as one of his fellow border patrol guards stepped into the room, eying him over curiously.

"Hiei, are you alright?" he asked. "You look like shit."

"Thanks, idiot," Hiei growled back, partly because he did truly believe that the demon in question was an idiot and partly because he had no idea what the demon's name was. "Where am I?"

"The conference room," the demon replied.

"No, you idiot, where am I?" Hiei asked again, placing extra emphasis on the word "where". "I mean when – no, I mean how – no, I mean why–"

Hiei stopped short as the demon he had been talking to vanished and, at the exact same moment, three others appeared in the room around him. They all looked startled and began demanding to know how he had just appeared in the room: and then the truth of the matter occurred to Hiei.

He was travelling between multiple realities even though he had barely moved, and it seemed as though he was doomed to keep doing so in an endless tide of chaos until his now massive wound had healed.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei is thrown from reality to reality without cease, but he starts to notice a pattern and thinks he can overcome it. In a bid to control what is happening and get to where he wants to be he starts out across demon world, where something quite exceptional happens and he shortly finds himself in the most unexpected place. **Chapter 21 – Slight Return**


	21. Slight Return

**A/N:** **Long chapter warning  
Angst warning  
Story 180 warning**

 **Recap:** Mukuro gave Hiei his last 4 chances at visiting alternate realities, but none of them were paradise. In one alternate reality, Hiei encountered a version of his life where he had given up inter-reality travel after the near miss reality because he had concluded that ANYTHING HE DOES TURNS ANY OTHER REALITY INTO THE NORM REALITY. Out of desperation, in the tenth reality he visited, he made Mukuro use her Dividing Realities attack on him even though she had yet to perfect it, which resulted in him being stuck in a loop of jumping to different realities every few minutes.

* * *

 **Chapter 21: Slight Return**

"What the hell just happened? You just appeared out of nowhere!"

"Hn, I just strolled in. You're pathetic eyes are obviously too slow to keep up with me."

Hiei decided to try to keep a low profile. He was already barely upright and bleeding profusely from two cross-shaped wounds that roughly over-lapped each other on his torso and so he did not need the added complication of randomly popping in and out of existence in other realities to make him even more conspicuous. He just wanted to get to paradise and get to Botan and Monzan: and a quick check of his hand and chest told him that this was not paradise.

He walked on, ignoring the continual barrage of questions the other idiots in the room were firing at him. All he had to do was watch out for the moment he arrived in the paradise reality, and then he would stop jumping and stay where he was.

Though he was not really sure how he was going to achieve that.

Hiei wondered what effect healing his wound would have. If he climbed into a healing chamber, would both wounds heal at once? Would he be sent back to his own reality? Would he even be able to stay in a healing chamber, or would be he thrown into multiple realities while he was still in the healing chamber trying to heal his wound?

Would he be sent to a reality where he was already dead, just as spirit world Special Defence Force officer Botan had warned him that he might?

He paused in the hallway, leaning one shoulder against the wall to support himself. If he was sent to a reality where he was dead and consequently died himself then everything he had been working for would have been in vain. Not only would he never get back to paradise but his own reality would be doomed to failure without him there to enact Mukuro's plan to bring peace to demon world.

Asking the Mukuro of another reality (a Mukuro who had not perfected the Dividing Realities attack, no less) to use the Dividing Realities on him when he was already under the effects of the attack had been a bad decision, Hiei decided: but not necessarily one that he would have to regret if it got him back to paradise.

Though he would be furious if he reached paradise and was then promptly sent somewhere else before he could even appreciate his return to his chosen existence.

Hiei stepped away from the wall and his surroundings changed again, figures appearing that had not been there before. He touched one hand to his chest and looked down at the other: he still had both hirui stones on and was without a wedding ring. He walked on slowly, significantly weakened by his injuries. He was too weak to try to use his jagan eye and so he had to settle for checking that he had both hiruiseki and for the presence of his wedding ring as he moved through the fortress, his surroundings continually changing as he went. He started to count, and reasoned that he got about two minutes in each reality before it changed again, and by the time he had reached the gates to Mukuro's headquarters that time period had increased slightly to about just under three minutes.

Hiei moved out onto the border patrol road, which, as he started the long trek alongside it, changed intermittently from overgrown to well-used, and on several occasions he was almost run over by the sudden appearance of a patrol vehicle. He tried to stay off of the road itself, but he was still quite uneasy on his feet so it was not always possible. He travelled to the nearest portal to the living world and stood watching it for some time, the risk of hitting a Kakai Barrier proving to be too great even for Hiei's determination. He knew that, in his current, weakened condition, if he got caught in the web of the Kakai Barrier, it would kill him.

Hiei turned off the road and started to move north towards the border between Mukuro's territory and the upper region of demon world. In any reality he knew that he was likely to find the Special Defence Force up there, and if there was a Kakai Barrier they could let him through it, and if not he could just get them to take him to the living world anyway, since he would be safe if he was with them: which was quite an ironic thought.

As he reached the more remote parts of Mukuro's territory, the shifts in reality were harder to detect, but Hiei was almost sure that the delay between them was becoming longer, having reached over five minutes. He felt a little more steady as he walked, and he wondered if it was because his secondary wound was starting to dry up. Perhaps as it healed he would spend longer in each reality, and once it had healed he would remain in whatever reality he was in until his initial wound also healed, at which point he supposed he would be sent back to his own reality.

Or maybe not. Hiei had no idea what would become of him. He was barely able to think enough to concentrate on where he was going and to count the gap between his leaps, he did not have the energy to even begin to guess at when the madness would stop. He kept his right hand pressed against the point on his chest where the hirui stones rested so that he would know instantly if he reached a reality where he only had one, and he kept glancing down at his left hand in case his wedding ring or the tape he covered it with reappeared at any moment.

But as the ravine between Mukuro's territory and the upper region of demon world came into his line of sight, Hiei was yet to reach paradise. He stopped at the edge of the ravine and lay down on his back, watching the clouds – which was one way he had been able to tell when he had travelled to another reality – and keeping one hand on his chest. He stayed there through what he thought was about twelve different realities, none of which was paradise and each one lasting longer than the last. He reasoned that he had lain where he was for close to two hours by the time he got up again, feeling strong enough that he could make the leap across the ravine. He waited for another shift in reality before making his jump just in case the other side moved halfway through his leap and he plummeted to his death – not that it was likely to, but he did not need to chance anything else to luck.

At the other side if the ravine he jogged along in a straight line for the first ten minutes or so through a rocky landscape before remembering that the last time he had run across the same piece of ground and passed between realities, he had run right into a rock: and so he slowed his pace as he neared the time he suspected he was about to shift again, touching a hand to the two hiruiseki around his neck and watching the sky ahead of himself for any changes. It was still dark, the middle of the night, and Hiei's long range visibility was accordingly restricted to what he could see by the light of the moon and the glimpses he caught when flashes of lightning illuminated distant patches of land. He saw a shift in the sky and abruptly he was plunged into near total darkness as a thick cloud suddenly appeared over the moon. Hiei stopped moving altogether, a sickening sensation swirling inside of him.

A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the land ahead of him for but an instant: but what it had revealed remained burned into Hiei's mind long after the land ahead of him had fallen into darkness once more.

Hiei still had two hiruiseki around his neck and no wedding ring, and, as he grabbed at his side, he realised that he had an empty scabbard at his hip, meaning that he was apparently back in his own reality – whether that was because he had returned there or been sent there as it was an alternate version of the other reality Mukuro had sent him away from he could not be sure – and now he was in the middle of no-man's land, facing Kurama's most vicious of demon plants without a weapon.

Hiei tried to run off to one side, dodging as best he could and relying mostly on the energy of the plant to detect its movements. He was significantly slower in his weakened form but he knew that if he stopped trying to escape, he would be dead, and so he staggered on, not even daring to punch or kick lest the plant catch hold of him. Hiei managed to evade the plant for what seemed like several minutes before he felt three consecutive punches at the wound in his gut, and he looked down – though he did not need to do so to know what had happened – and saw three tendrils of the blood-sucking plant embedded into his wound. He was not really sure where the seed of the plant had been sown, but it did not matter: the plant had found an open wound on his body, and it would do to him what Hiei had witnessed it do to Karasu during the dark tournament.

Hiei coughed out a mouthful of blood and tried to grab at the vines to pull them out: but he had become immobile, paralyzed somehow. He thought that maybe the plant had injected him with some sort of venom that was stopping him from moving, but equally it was rapidly drinking his blood, which was enough to weaken him without the aid of any venoms. He suddenly wished the time gaps between his reality leaps had not become so long, as he needed to switch realities, that being his only hope for escaping with his life: but that would be a lucky thing, and Hiei had never felt like a lucky man.

He started to fall forwards, his legs folding beneath him and his arms becoming heavy at his sides. Leaves of the plant slid around his shoulders and hips, pulling him into an almost comforting embrace and holding him semi-upright as the tendrils of the plant continued to feed. He started to feel his head buzz and he knew that he would soon lose consciousness, his eyes lifting to the sky as he tried to keep them open.

And then, as though by a miracle, Hiei saw the sky change, the moon suddenly out from behind the cloud and the plant holding him vanished. Without the leaves holding him up Hiei fell to the ground face-first, where he lay for several minutes before the thought occurred to him that he could jump to another reality at any time, and another reality might have more demon plants, and so with a great effort he got to his feet and moved on.

Every step was a strain and Hiei saw the sky change twice, but he did not sense any demon plants at either change and he was still wearing two hiruiseki and no wedding ring each time. He eventually reached the woodland area and managed to stagger through most of it before he fell to the ground, seeing one more shift before he passed out.

* * *

When Hiei started to regain his senses he opened his eyes to darkness and wondered if he had gone blind or had his eyes gouged out. He brought a hand clumsily to his face and found some sort of eye-mask over his eyes. It was extremely irritating, but he did not have the energy to remove it, and so he let his hand fall to his side once more and just lay where he was.

Wherever he was it was very quiet. The air he was breathing was not demon world air, and as he gripped his hands at what he was laid on he felt bedding that was too soft for his liking, and yet felt quite comforting somehow. He groaned and felt a pain in his gut as he did so. He started to reach his hands towards the source of the pain to check on the status of his wound, stiffening in alarm when his hands were halted by a hand gripping around each of his wrists and holding them away from his body.

"Don't touch it, Hiei," a voice said softly. "It's healed, but you're still badly scarred. You should try to just rest. You're lucky to be alive, I don't know what you were thinking going out there like that…"

Hiei let his hands go limp and allowed the hands holding his wrists to guide them back down to the bed at his sides.

"…Botan?" he said faintly.

"Just relax, you're safe now," she replied.

"Botan?"

"Shh, try to relax…"

Hiei reached both hands up to the mask over his eyes and began clumsily tugging at it. He felt the mattress beneath him shift slightly as the weight of another person weighed it down at his side. Images of lying in bed in the tree-house in paradise with Botan began filling his mind and he was desperate to confirm if they were what lay beyond the eye-mask: had he somehow healed and ended up in the paradise reality? He wondered how that was possible, but at the same time he did not really care just so long as it was true.

"Hiei, keep that on and get some sleep!" Botan said, her hands grabbing at his hands and trying to stop his actions.

Even though he was weakened, Botan's strength still came nowhere close to halting his actions and he shortly managed to pull the mask from his eyes, where it became tangled in his hair. He tried to tug it free but quickly gave up as he saw that Botan's face was mere inches from his and she was on the bed at his side. He stared into her eyes for a long time, seeing nothing else beyond them and being aware of nothing other than how close she was and the feeling of her soft and delicate hands around his.

"Oh fuck woman I thought I would never see you again," he growled, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her down on top of him.

She squealed in shock, one of her elbows inadvertently colliding with his gut as her hands fell from his, causing him far more pain than it ought to have. Somehow between him doubling up in pain and Botan losing her balance above him they rolled over each other and stopped with Hiei laid on top of Botan, his nose barely touching hers.

"What are you doing?" she whispered. "You're still badly hurt, you should be relaxing!"

"Who cares?" he whispered back. "We can still have fun, remember? Just let me… Just…"

Hiei made to kiss her but found that he could not decide it he wanted to kiss her lips or her neck and he eventually settled for just burying his face between her breasts, bringing another yelp of surprise from her. Her body twitched beneath him and her hips collided with his several times in a most delightful way, and even though he was in danger of suffocating himself, Hiei stayed exactly where he was, blindly reaching his hands into Botan's hair.

"Hiei…" she gasped. "What are you doing? You have to get off of me!"

Hiei thought she sounded like she was trying to play coy, but as he repositioned his legs on either side of hers he noticed that it felt like she was wearing her ferry girl kimono, which was quite strange. Maybe she was feeling especially frisky and had decided to go for a little role-playing, he thought, keeping his face exactly where it was.

"Oh, Hiei, please!" she whispered.

Hiei smiled – as much as he could smile with his face squashed against Botan's chest – and moved his hands further into her hair, tangling his fingers into it. He heard what sounded like a door opening at his side but he ignored it, too lost in his increasing haze of desire, his own excitement having long overtaken his drowsiness, weakness and pain.

"Well it's nice to see that the two of you have finally put aside your differences, Hiei, Botan."

Hiei froze. That was the last voice he had wanted to hear. What was that idiot doing in his house? And would he even bother waiting to find out or would he just kill him, Hiei wondered?

"This isn't what it looks like, I fell!" Botan cried.

Hiei slowly raised himself up, and very reluctantly, lifted his head, first looking down at Botan beneath him. She looked terrified, and that was definitely not a good thing, he thought ominously. He then slowly turned his head to one side, gradually noticing that he was not in the bedroom of the tree-house, or even in the living world, before his eyes eventually reached the doorway, where he found a very disapproving and irked looking adult form Koenma standing watching him with his arms folded.

"Why am I in spirit world?" Hiei asked him.

"A couple of SDF officers found you lying unconscious near the border between the part of demon world that spirit world owns and the rest of demon world," he replied. "Ordinarily they would have just left you there, but they took you here for two reasons: first of all they recognised you as the demon who keeps magically appearing in the living world and secondly you just magically appeared right in front of them."

Hiei wondered how many days he had been unconscious in the same spot to have healed and reappeared in his own reality. He wanted to ask that question, but he had lost track of time himself and had no reference point to relate back to. He supposed that only Mukuro would be able to tell him how long he had been gone: and thinking about Mukuro and being back in his own reality, Hiei realised then that his last chance to get back to paradise had truly passed. He was now stuck back in his own reality – the norm reality, as Shuichi had called it, or the shit reality, as Hiei liked to call it – with nothing to look forward to but a final confrontation with Kurama and Yusuke that would end his life.

"You have some terrible scars," Botan said.

Hiei looked down at her, surprised to find her looking a lot less frightened.

"But if you're well enough to be causing this sort of trouble, you're well enough to go back to where you belong," Koenma added. "I'll give you an hour to get to the front gates, where an SDF officer will meet with you to take you back to demon world. If you're not there within the hour, I'll send the entire SDF squad up here to take you away by force."

Hiei sighed and clambered off of Botan.

"I'm leaving," he said flatly.

"See that you do," Koenma replied, before closing himself out of the room.

Hiei crawled awkwardly to the edge of the bed and stood up, looking about himself again and feeling quite stupid for not having noticed that he was in spirit world before that moment. He excused himself on the basis that the room was slightly familiar and filled with Botan's aura and scent, so it was an understandable mistake to make. His abdomen ached and he was still tired, his limbs feeling weak and heavy, but he had enough strength to make the journey back to Mukuro and so he started for the door.

"Hiei, wait!"

He halted on the spot at the sound of Botan's voice behind him, and another cursory glance around the room suddenly made him realise that he was actually in Botan's bedroom in spirit world in his own reality, and that was more than a little odd, since he had been taken there when he had been unconscious. Surely if he had been found and retrieved by the Special Defence Force he should have been deposited into a prison cell?

"Hiei, I wanted to thank you for what you…" Botan began. "Well, it wasn't exactly what you told me or really even anything that you did, but I feel grateful that I found out the truth about Lord Koenma's intentions, and that never would have happened if it hadn't been for you."

Hiei slowly turned around to face her to check that her expression matched what she was saying, because he had never expected to hear her say anything so generous to him in the shitty norm reality.

"I've always been very close to Lord Koenma," she said, moving around to sit on the edge of her bed. "We always had so much fun together, and he really understands me. I thought I would be happy if I married him and had a family. I had no idea that he was going to basically keep me as a concubine. That would have made me miserable and it would have become my fate before I could stop it from happening, but because of your… Interference I was able to stop it. You saved me an eternity of longing and disappointment, so thank you, I guess."

Botan lowered her head and reached her hands up to her hair, which had mostly fallen loose, pulling the remaining ties from it and letting it spill over her shoulders. She was trying to tell him that she was happier and grateful, but to Hiei she looked miserable. He knew that she was miserable because she too was in the wrong reality just like he was: she was meant to be in the paradise reality with him and Monzan, but instead she was stuck living a mediocre existence as a ferry girl. She was probably also upset because her plans to be with Koenma had blown up in her face, he thought. She had looked happy enough with him in one of the other realities he had briefly visited before his little gambit with taking a shot from the Dividing Realities whilst still under the influence of a previous hit.

Hiei did not want her to be sad. There was no way to get her to paradise, and as he would never get there himself, the Botan in front of him was the only Botan that he would ever really know. It was too late to fix anything, as Shuichi had told him he should, mainly because he was returning to demon world to end his life: but Hiei thought that there was maybe just one thing that he had enough time left to try to make better. He did not really know if it would work for Botan, but he felt that he had to do it anyway, because it would allow him some peace of mind in the time he had left alive.

Hiei walked back up to Botan and gently took her face in his hands, lifting it up to force her to meet his eyes. She looked like she might cry, but that only made him all the more determined to follow through with his plan.

"Botan, the day you were caught by that rock beast, I could have saved you," he said. "I turned around and saw what was happening, and I could have gone back and made it stop, but I chose not to. I didn't believe that you were real, that you had real feelings or thoughts, and I was only thinking about saving myself. That was the single biggest mistake I have ever made in my life. Not saving you that day was a very bad decision to make, but it was a conscious decision for me, it was no accident. I was wrong, and I regret not going back for you more than… I regret it greatly. And for the pain you suffered, the fear you felt and everything that you endured during and afterwards, I am truly, truly sorry."

Botan started to frown and she looked torn between confusion and sadness.

"I mean my regret, so don't think that I don't and go off and join the SDF," he added, remembering then what had happened to Botan in the reality where he had apologised to her for what had happened with the rock monster.

"Why would I join the SDF?" she asked, laughing slightly despite her obvious sadness.

"Just… Don't do it," he insisted.

She nodded.

"I really appreciate that you did apologise," she said. "Even though it did take you 10 years, I still appreciate it. And I appreciate that you were honest with me. About everything. But I don't think I could ever be your friend again, you hurt me too badly and let me down when I needed you the most."

Hiei nodded, slipping his hands from her face.

"I also need to ask a favour of you," he said.

She gave him a slightly suspicious look then and he knew why: she probably thought that he had only apologised to try to bribe her into doing something for him in return.

"I don't think the war in demon world will continue for much longer," he continued. "Once the fighting stops, I need you to do what you can to get Yukina out of the ice village and back to the living world. She's not happy where she is and she'll just waste away if she stays there."

"Why can't you take her to the living world yourself?" Botan asked.

"I'm banned from the living world and it would be too dangerous for me to take her across demon world through the war to the upper region of demon world," he replied. "She's not strong enough to be affected by the Kakai Barrier, she could pass through it easily enough, but she can't get out of the ice village alone."

"Can't you go for her yourself once the fighting stops?"

Hiei shook his head. He could not tell her that he would die before then because she might tell Koenma or Yusuke and that would spoil Mukuro's plan for peace.

"Yukina was always my friend," Botan said. "I was very upset when she was taken from us too. I'll do what I can for her if the war stops, I promise."

Hiei nodded again.

"But I'd like it you could tell me something first," she continued. "How did you know about Monzan Kadokura?"

Hiei looked directly into Botan's eyes, and a silence filled the room that felt almost comforting. He wanted to tell her that he knew because she had told him herself, because she had sold to him the idea of naming their son in a way that meant something they both appreciated, that their son carried that name and lived up to the legacy of it because he was a strong, quiet and even-tempered child with infinite potential who had made them both so proud that they were preparing to have a second son.

But instead he told her the answer that was easiest for them both to understand.

"Koenma was right," he said. "I used my jagan eye and read your mind. I just said it to piss him off."

"Oh, I see," she said, nodding her understanding. "I thought it must have been that."

"I have to go," Hiei said.

"Of course."

Botan got to her feet and started towards him but stopped halfway, her eyes wandering to the ground. Hiei hesitated, fighting the urge to risk asking her for a "nice friendly hug" before he left. He could tell that she had barely accepted his apology and so he knew that trying to make her hug him was pushing his luck – not that he had ever considered himself lucky. He was glad that she had seemed slightly more at ease after his apology, but he had mostly apologised to her for his own sake, because he did not want to die and have her forever remember him as the bastard who let her be killed in a quite horrible way.

When she said no more to him Hiei left the room and made his way to the temple gates without looking back or saying any more himself: there was nothing left to be said anyway. He checked on his gut as he walked, seeing that he still had faint purple marks from the last two Dividing Realities blasts, but the wounds were definitely closed over and so he was back permanently in his own reality. He supposed that he could have died leaping about through realities – and indeed he almost had when Kurama's blood-sucking plant had caught him – and that would have been a pointless death, unlike the death that he was facing now, which at least had a purpose.

"How many times more will we do this, Hiei?" the leader of the SDF asked Hiei as he joined him by the temple gates.

"This is the last time," Hiei replied. "You insolent bastard."

The man smiled tightly and opened the gate, letting Hiei walk out ahead of him, where three more SDF officers were holding open a small hole in the Kakai Barrier for him to return to demon world and carry out Mukuro's plan. Hiei passed through it without hesitation.

* * *

Hiei sat alone, in what was normally a busy part of Mukuro's fortress, polishing his new sword. He had continually forgotten to replace the one Mukuro had broken just before she sent him away to another reality for the very first time, but now he finally had one, and it had yet to be used. Three days had passed since his return, where he had been quite surprised to learn that he had only been gone for just over a day. He had a theory that he had actually continued passing through realities when he had been unconscious in the woodland by the border to the spirit world owned section of demon world, and he had somehow reached the reality where Botan was a Special Defence Force soldier, and she had found him there and taken him to the border and healed his wounds, which had sent him back to his own reality, thus explaining why he had suddenly appeared in his own reality by the border.

He had no way of ever finding out if his theory was at all true, but he liked to think that it was as it gave him a degree of comfort to think that Botan had been with him during that time. His other theory was that he had reached the paradise reality – but of course been unconscious and never realised it – and been spotted by someone who had alerted Botan to his presence there and she had come to heal him.

Although it was most likely that he had just healed himself, Hiei thought.

Mukuro was setting up her trap for Kurama and Yusuke, and although she had explained it to him already, Hiei could not really remember much about it. He knew that she had changed the location of it because of Kurama's demon plants in no man's land, but otherwise he could only focus on the fact that her plan still involved him luring his old allies out and then holding them in place while all three of them died. He hoped that Mukuro's plan did end the war and that Botan helped Yukina get back to living world – though she would only be moderately happy there, he supposed, since she would always be looking for her brother's approval to be with that idiot Kuwabara.

Hiei sighed, replacing his sword to its sheath. Mukuro was due to return that day and he was basically readying himself to leave and complete her plan. There were fewer demons present in her fortress than ever, and Hiei could finally appreciate that the situation was indeed quite dire.

But he still wished that he could have just gone back to paradise: his life there had so much more meaning and it had seemed so much more dignified, a long future stretching out in front of him filled with hope and happiness.

Hiei stood up and marched briskly from the room, refusing to dwell on his own regret. He had never regretted anything before, and although he did now, it was too late to do anything about it. He had apologised to Botan, he had initiated Yukina's freedom and he was about to help end the war: there was nothing more he could do.

Hiei kept moving through the countless – and disturbingly quiet and empty – hallways of the fortress until he sighted Mukuro herself, accompanied by a very small handful of her remaining guard, returning from wherever she had been setting up her little trap. Her face was set and determined, but Hiei could sense a sadness about her: he supposed that she did care on some level, and that she was genuinely disappointed that she was going to sacrifice his life.

"Give us a minute," she said to the others.

They all moved on, leaving Mukuro alone with Hiei by the entranceway. Mukuro watched them go until they were all out of sight before turning her attention to Hiei.

"Are you ready to go through with this?" she asked him, her voice tense.

"Of course," he lied – he would never be ready, so now was as good a time as any.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"Because if there's anything you want to say or do first, that's fine," she said. "If you have any unfinished business, or last requests, I'm happy to oblige."

"Hn, what unfinished business could I possibly have?"

"…Well any last requests then. I'll give you anything you want Hiei. Anything."

Hiei frowned slightly as the look on Mukuro's face changed almost imperceptibly. He suspected that she was offering him something of a lewd nature, which surprised him after so long in her service. He supposed that she was only making such an offer because she would never see him again, so there would be no real consequences to anything that they did do together.

"…Anything?" he asked quietly.

"Anything," she replied with a nod. "There will be a delay before you can actually finish this anyway, I could stall it for a day or so if you want something… More involved…"

Hiei could tell what she was building to, and although knowing that it was wrong, he could not help himself from speaking aloud the thought that was screaming around the back of his mind. He slowly held out his arms, swallowing hard before voicing his last request.

"Send me back," he said quietly.

Mukuro was momentarily lost in a haze of confusion, apparently under the illusion that he had been about to accept what she had appeared to be trying to offer him.

"Do what?" she asked as clarity began to return to her features.

"Send me back," he said again. "Hit me as hard as you can. You said you can delay for a day, so send me back for a day. Let me just have one more day there. Please."

She sighed heavily.

"Hiei, I can't guarantee where you would go if I tried again," she said.

"I know," he said. "But it's a gamble I want to take. The prize is worth it. Even if it fails, it was still worth having taken that chance."

"Hiei, this is ridiculous," she said gently. "Surely you realise by now that any other reality you visited could never truly be in your own life here?"

"I know that," he replied. "And that's why I want to go back. I can't make it happen, but I can at least go back and experience it again. Please. You said you would give me anything."

Mukuro looked down at the ground for a long time but Hiei held his stance, his arms out, ready to take the hit.

"If I do it," she eventually said. "I will only do it once. And if it fails, we don't try again. I will never do this again after this once, understand?"

Hiei nodded firmly.

"Okay then," Mukuro said. "For you I will do this just one more time."

Hiei closed his eyes as he awaited the inevitable. He knew that he could end up anywhere and he knew that it would be too dangerous to ask the Mukuro of the reality he did end up in to send him somewhere else: but he hoped that, just this once, he would be lucky.

The blow hurt when it hit, but not as badly as Hiei had expected it to. He had been mostly healed and almost all of the tenderness had gone, but being cut deeply again had aggravated some of that tenderness. He bounced along the long hallway a few times before colliding with something hard and falling to the ground. He opened his eyes again and saw that he had been thrown into a group of demons and surprisingly they were not angered that he had knocked them over, rather they were simply confused about his sudden appearance there.

"Hey, you need to get to a healing chamber," one of them suggested.

"No," Hiei said firmly, getting to his feet and looking about himself.

The hallway was quite crowded, which was a good sign as it probably meant there was no war in this reality.

"You're bleeding," another demon told him.

"I don't care," Hiei grunted.

"I guess it's not really noticeable in that shirt, huh?"

Hiei rolled his eyes and started to say something sarcastic: but then he noticed why the demon had said what he had. Slowly Hiei lowered his head to look down at himself. His wound was concealed beneath his shirt but he had bled through it: though just as the demon at his side had suggested, the blood was not very noticeable because it was almost exactly the same colour as his shirt.

Hiei touched a hand to his chest and felt a single hiruiseki hanging there. He quickly pulled it out to inspect it, seeing that it was his own.

"Where's my other hirui stone?" he asked, looking around the others behind him.

"I thought you only ever had one?" one of them responded.

Hiei did not know if that was good or bad. He looked down at his left hand and almost fell over at what he saw. He hardened his resolve and slowly peeled off the tape he had around the base of one finger, daring to smile as he started to uncover a shiny ring.

"I'm back!" he yelled when he had completed his task.

His voice had been much louder than he had meant it to be and he had inadvertently attracted the attention of several others, but he did not care. He started running down the hallway to the doors and the yard beyond, only stopping when he sighted Hitoshi, all his limbs in tact, talking to another demon.

"Hitoshi!" Hiei shouted at him, making him jump in shock. "Your ugly face has never looked so good!"

"…Thanks?" Hitoshi responded.

Hiei ran on blindly, quickly taking himself onto the well-worn border patrol road and following it to the nearest portal to the living world which he threw himself through without hesitation or fear of meeting a barrier of any kind: and he landed in the living world flawlessly. He stopped to get his bearings, seeing Yukimura Restaurant a short way ahead of him. He ran to it, finding it bustling with activity, and he could just make out Yusuke working behind the counter. Feeling more confident, Hiei ran on to the green, green corner-shop where he almost ran right into Kurama.

"Hiei!" Kurama gasped. "Are you alright?"

Hiei quickly composed himself as he realised that he had probably been grinning like an idiot.

"Are you bleeding?" Kurama asked, pointing at his mid-section. "Would you like some healing–"

"No healing!" Hiei snapped, suddenly deadly serious. "Just… Some bandages would be good."

Kurama nodded, but Hiei could see the scepticism in his eyes.

"Come on inside," he said.

Hiei followed Kurama into the shop, nodding at Maya as he passed her. Kurama led him through a door to a small office, where he produced a little plastic suitcase.

"Have you just arrived?" he asked as he popped it open.

"Yes," Hiei replied, before considering what had been asked of him.

"You've been gone a long time," Kurama said. "Have you been busy?"

Hiei stole a glance at the fox demon, checking for any signs of suspicion in his eyes before answering.

"I've been training," he said.

Kurama nodded and passed Hiei a wet cloth that smelled like alcohol. Hiei took off his shirt and wiped away the excess blood with the cloth before allowing Kurama to wind an entire roll of bandages around his middle. He then put his shirt back on and prepared himself to return home. Things looked good so far, but he had learned from past experiences in other realities that finding paradise demon world, paradise Yusuke and paradise Kurama did not necessarily mean that he had found the actual paradise reality.

"Excuse me?" Maya said, knocking on the door and leaning into the room. "Sorry to bother you boys, but Botan just called."

Hiei tried not to look as curious as he felt as Kurama packed away his little plastic suitcase and Maya continued talking.

"She said Kuwabara has to work late tonight," she said.

Hiei felt his optimism start to die.

"And he called her to say he won't be able to collect Monzan from kindergarten today," Maya said.

Hiei felt his optimism start to rise again.

"She wondered if one of us would go for him. She would go herself, but he's ready to go home now and by the time she gets across town it would be–"

"I'll go," Hiei said, standing abruptly.

"You'll go?" Kurama echoed.

"Yes," Hiei said, turning away from him so that he did not have to see the incredulous look on his face that made him look worryingly like Shuichi.

"A-are you sure?" Maya asked. "I can easily pick him up in the car–"

"I'll go," Hiei insisted

"Do you even know where the kindergarten is, Hiei?" Kurama asked him.

Hiei hesitated, silently wondering if he was meant to know where the kindergarten was or not.

"It's not far from here," Maya said, saving him the discomfort of fabricating a lie. "It's just obviously a long way back home for him. Come on out front, I'll show you the way."

Hiei followed her without bothering to look back and gauge Kurama's reaction. He just wanted to get back to his wife and son, and once he had that part sorted, he would worry about the others and how he would ensure he stayed where he was forever more. Maya led him back out onto the street and gave him a brief set of instructions about which roads to take to get to the kindergarten which he barely had the patience to listen to before he ran off at full speed, arriving at his destination in a matter of seconds.

The kindergarten was a small place near a quaint little park and in a very pleasant part of the city. It seemed abandoned but Hiei continued on through the entrance, where he found himself in a small reception area.

"Can I help you, Sir?" a woman at a desk asked him.

"Give me back my son," he replied.

Her smile faltered slightly and she picked up a clipboard, eying it over.

"You're here to collect your son, that's fine," she said. "Can you just confirm the name?"

Hiei twitched in mild irritation, but suppressed the urge to bark out something offensive and demand to have his son returned to him, instead opting to be cooperative.

"My son's name is Monzan," he said.

"Monzan…" she said, pretending to check the paper pinned to her clipboard. "And the surname?"

"The what name?" Hiei echoed.

"The surname?" she repeated.

Monzan had a surname? Hiei did not even have a surname himself, so how the hell did his son have one? Hiei tried to think quickly to avoid making the woman suspicious of him – he ought to know his own son's name, after all – and he realised then that he did not even know if Botan had a surname. Maybe she did. Maybe Monzan had her surname. Maybe Hiei himself did too after marrying her. Or maybe they had used another name. Hiei was a jaganshi and often referred to as Hiei Jaganshi, so maybe they had taken Jaganshi as a surname: though calling themselves Mister and Missus Master of the Evil Eye was probably not a good idea in the living world.

"Kadokura!" he blurted out as it suddenly occurred to him.

He felt quite smug for remembering that: obviously they had taken the name Kadokura, since that was a human name and made a good cover for them in the living world, whilst also allowing Monzan to be named Monzan Kadokura, in keeping with the tradition Botan was so fond of.

"Did you say Kuwabara?" the woman asked.

Hiei's smugness vanished.

"Yes, Monzan Kuwabara is ready to go, he's waiting outside," she continued. "Just one moment, I'll let the teacher know that you're here."

She walked from the room and Hiei considered that to have been the most sensible thing that she had probably ever done, since his anger was starting to flare. He marched up to the desk and snatched up the clipboard she had been holding, quickly locating the name Monzan, his anger only doubling when he saw that the full listing did in fact read "Kuwabara, Monzan".

"Fuck!" he cursed, throwing the clipboard across the room.

How could he possibly have landed in a reality where Botan had a child with Kuwabara?

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei is in for a few surprises with regards to Monzan, but he quickly forgets them when he arrives at Genkai's temple and sees how things are there. Mostly a chapter of Disney fluff and smut. **Chapter 22 – Paradise Found**

 **A/N:** Thanks to everyone who has reviewed over the last couple of days, it is much appreciated. This is the chapter I was mostly beating myself up about, because it's the start of part 3 (of 6) of the story, and it is a total 180 on the story told in part 2 (part 2 being everything from SDF Botan to Hiei making his "last request" in this chapter) – and that will be more obvious in the next chapter. So if this is still making sense and still readable, expect there to be more!

And there seriously is some fluff and major smut in the next chapter, so like, be warned and stuff…


	22. Paradise Found

**Recap:** Hiei was thrown about from reality to reality, including passing through his own reality, where he was attacked by one of Kurama's demon plants and almost died. He awoke in spirit world with Botan and he admitted he was wrong to have let her die and offered her an apology which she accepted. He lied to her about how he knew about Monzan (Kadokura) and returned to his own reality ready to accept his fate there fulfilling Mukuro's plan, and she offered him a last request, which he used to ask to be sent back to paradise. Mukuro obligingly sent him to another reality and it appeared to be paradise, but as Hiei went to collect Monzan from kindergarten, he discovered that his name was Kuwabara… (It was such a long chapter…)

* * *

 **Chapter 22: Paradise Found**

Hiei was livid. He was far beyond all consolation. There was not even any excuse for where Mukuro had sent him this time, because there was no decision he could possibly have made that would have led to Botan marrying and having a child with Kuwabara. And, if what Maya had said about him working late was any indication, Kuwabara was still an "apprentice" in this reality: so then what had become of Yukina?

Hiei hated Kuwabara so much. He was going to kill him by the slowest and most painful method he could possibly dream up.

"Mister Kuwabara?"

Hiei spun around, horrified to see a woman apparently addressing him.

"Mister Kuwabara, I presume?" she said to him.

Hiei looked back over his shoulder, half-expecting to find the orange-haired idiot standing behind him.

"I'm Miss Shou, Monzan's teacher," she said.

Hiei eyed her over. She was wizened, slow-moving and simplistic. No son of his could possibly learn anything of use from such a creature. Only an idiot like Kuwabara would put a child to such a teacher with any expectations of greatness.

"It's nice to finally meet you, Mister Kuwabara," she said, smiling too easily for Hiei's liking. "I can definitely see the family resemblance."

Hiei balked. Was he in a reality where he was related to Kuwabara? Or worse: a reality where he looked like Kuwabara?

"It's always a pleasure for us to have your brother here," she continued, only making Hiei more uneasy. "He's such a celebrity around this city – not that I need to tell you that, of course."

Hiei's anger had been surpassed by his confusion, and so he gave up plotting mass murder.

"Monzan, your daddy's here to take you home today!" she said.

Hiei pulled a face at her but quickly forgot all about her and everything that had happened in the last few minutes when Monzan stepped into his line of sight.

"Daddy?"

Hiei dropped to his knees, relief washing over him as he found himself looking at a boy with very dark blue spiky hair, pale red eyes and a bandana concealing the third eye on his forehead.

"Son," he said, holding out his arms.

Monzan took a few steps towards him, looking slightly wary. That other Hiei never hugged the boy, Hiei thought to himself then, and so his actions probably seemed strange to him.

"Come here!" he snapped.

Monzan stumbled up to him and Hiei grabbed his arms around him before he could change his mind. Monzan hesitated for only a brief moment before putting his arms around Hiei's neck, an action that made Hiei sigh and brought a strange sense of relief from a tension he had not realised he had been suffering from before that moment.

"He looks just like you, Mister Kuwabara," the woman who called herself a teacher said.

"Yes, he does," Hiei flatly replied, still clinging onto his son.

"I always thought that he was like his mother until now," she said. "He's a very bright boy and very dexterous for his age. You must be proud."

"Yes I am," Hiei said. "You don't need to state the obvious."

"I-I was just letting you know that he does well here."

Hiei narrowed his eyes at the woman. He did not like her at all. She was unfit to teach any son of his anything useful and she kept calling him "Mister Kuwabara": what an idiot.

"Let's go," he said, standing up and picking up Monzan with him.

Monzan held on without complaint and Hiei gave the woman one last glower before leaving the building. As he reached the street outside a few things occurred to him: Monzan was quite big and did not need to be carried, Monzan was wearing human clothes that were slightly too cutesy and Monzan had a silly little bag strapped to his back.

Hiei stopped and set the boy down on his feet, straightening up again to look down at him. He felt a little disappointed in himself when instinct told him to pick his son up again, since that was quite a sappy response to have. Monzan looked up at him for several seconds before looking about himself as though looking for something specific. He then looked up at Hiei again, looking slightly confused and worried.

"Where's the car?" he asked.

"The what?" Hiei echoed.

"Where's the car?" Monzan asked again.

Hiei looked down at the child's slightly chubby physique, realising then that it had probably come about because he lived off of Yukina's good cooking and being driven around everywhere by Kuwabara.

"We're walking home," Hiei told him.

"Aw, but it's such a long way!" Monzan said, sounding slightly sulky.

It occurred to Hiei that he had no idea how to deal with a child throwing a temper tantrum, and he then found that slightly ironic since Mukuro had often accused him of throwing childish temper tantrums himself: and that thought made him again wonder what Mukuro really thought of Monzan.

"Can we run?" Monzan asked suddenly.

He was smiling and looking up at Hiei in an almost hopeful way.

"Hn, you couldn't keep up with me if I ran," Hiei told him frankly.

"I can run really, really fast," Monzan replied.

"You're not as fast as me," Hiei said.

"I'm really, really fast."

"You're not faster than me!"

"…I'm really fast."

"Not faster than me!"

"I bet I can get home before you."

"Don't be stupid, you're too fat and slow!"

"I'll race you home."

"You couldn't possibly keep up with me, you idiot!"

Monzan gave him a funny look and Hiei started to realise that he was having a quite childish argument with his own child: which made him feel especially ridiculous, and glad that Mukuro was not around to witness it.

"I might be slow because I have to carry my bag," Monzan said.

"Give me the bag," Hiei said.

"No," Monzan stubbornly replied. "I can still beat you anyway."

Hiei started to get angry again: where had this kid got his confidence from?

"You're too slow," he said.

"I am not," Monzan replied.

"Yes you are!"

"No I'm not!"

"Yes you are!"

"No I'm not!"

"Yes you are!"

Monzan folded his arms and glared up at Hiei, again reminding him that he was arguing with a child.

"Bet you can't catch me," he said.

"Hn, don't even–"

Hiei stopped talking, his eyes almost popping out of his head as Monzan vanished, the blast of displaced air where he had shot off from billowing around Hiei's ankles.

"…Fuck!" he gasped.

He started to run, taking a few strides to get up to full speed in his shock. He had not expected Monzan to be so fast because he was a little bit overweight, he was half-human, he was very young and he was clearly spoiled, but as Hiei tried to catch up to him he was shocked to find that the boy had already left the city.

And then Hiei found himself more concerned that Monzan was on his own than worried about the prospect of being beaten in a race by his own son.

He pushed himself to run as fast as he possibly could and he was able to close the distance between them but only eventually caught up to Monzan as he reached the front porch of the old lady's temple.

"I got here first," Monzan told him as they both stopped by the door.

"You started running first, you cheated!" Hiei snapped before realising how childish he sounded.

He sighed and turned away from the boy, looking out across the temple grounds, feeling relieved again when he saw the faint outline of his tree-house home through the trees. That was another sign that he was back in the right reality, though he did think it was strange that Monzan had gone to the temple instead of the tree-house, after saying that he was going home. He turned around to ask the boy why that was, only find that he had disappeared.

Hiei continued into the temple, looking about for any signs of life. The inside of the temple looked especially clean and well-maintained, though Hiei supposed that he only felt that way because he was comparing it to the broken apart version of it in his own reality. The air smelled like warm sweet cakes, and Hiei found himself following the smell on instinct, taking himself to the kitchen, where Monzan was sat on one of the counter-tops, stuffing his face with a cake that was bigger than both his fists.

"Hiei!"

Hiei jerked around, almost overwhelmed to the point of falling over as he found himself looking at Yukina, looking completely unlike she did in any other reality he had visited lately. She was dressed in human clothes, she was smiling, her eyes were sparkling and she looked exactly like she did in the paradise reality. He wanted to think that this meant that he was back, but he was still wary after all the nasty surprises he had encountered in the other realities he had been to.

"You picked Monzan up from kindergarten?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"I didn't even know you were here!" she said. "I thought you were still in demon world!"

"…I came home," Hiei said carefully.

"I'm making things for this weekend, do you want to try something?"

Yukina waved a hand at the masses of bakery products littering the counters. Hiei shook his head before looking over at Monzan, who was getting more of his cake on his face than in his mouth.

"No more for him," he told Yukina.

"Aw, but he's so cute!" she said, walking over to where Monzan was sat and ruffling his hair.

"Don't spoil him," Hiei insisted.

"But he's just young!" Yukina replied. "He can train and be serious when he's grown up."

Hiei narrowed his eyes sceptically.

"Maybe I'm just over-compensating," Yukina said quietly. "I guess I just want him to know what love is, since we never had that growing up."

She smiled sadly at Hiei, which, combined with her remark, told him that she already knew about their relation.

"Don't worry, I won't let him gorge himself, I promise," she added.

Hiei nodded.

"That's why he came here, isn't it?" he asked. "He smelt the food."

Yukina laughed but quickly stopped herself when she saw the stern look on Hiei's face.

"He knew I was baking today," she whispered to him. "He didn't even want to go to kindergarten this morning."

Hiei rolled his eyes.

"He can help me," Yukina said. "He likes helping me around the kitchen. And he looks really cute with a wooden spoon."

Hiei groaned, glaring across the room at Monzan as he finished his cake and began licking his fingers clean in a quite undignified manner.

"Hey big guy, you got home fast!"

Hiei turned, watching on in momentary numbed awe as Botan entered the room, crossing it directly to Monzan. She was wearing a loose, strappy knee-length dress that almost disguised her curved belly but showed a reasonable amount of her shapely legs, her hair was pinned up slightly haphazardly at the back of her head and she was clearly the same Botan he had met in the paradise reality. He watched her dust the excess crumbs from Monzan's cheeks with her fingers and then remove his bandana.

"Were you good today?" she asked him.

He nodded his head and she kissed his forehead.

"Did Mister Minamino take you home?" she asked him.

He shook his head.

"Daddy took me home," he said.

"Daddy took you home?" she echoed, her voice suddenly changed.

Monzan nodded and pointed across the room at Hiei and Botan turned, looking startled at first to see Hiei standing there: but her expression quickly changed to one of joy. She crossed the room to him and started to joke about him surprising her with a visit but stopped when Hiei grabbed her into his arms suddenly. His mind went blank, everything about his own reality, inter-reality travel and anyone else outside of the room he was standing in leaving him.

"Are you glad to be home this time, brother?" Yukina asked, giggling slightly.

Hiei closed his eyes and allowed himself to smile. Yukina was right: he was glad and he was home. He held onto Botan for a little longer before leaning back from her and basking for a moment in the unconditionally loving way she looked into his eyes. He had become so tired of always having to deal with seeing hurt, fear or anger in her eyes when she looked at him and he had thought that he would never see anything else: so to once more see her looking at him in that happy, caring and tender way was an unexpected joy that made him feel lucky for the first time in his life.

"I was just on my way home to start work on Monzan's costume for the kindergarten play," she said. "I wasn't expecting you here today."

"Can I stay and help aunty Yukina?" Monzan asked.

"Of course you can, sweetie," Botan answered him. "But no more cakes or you'll spoil your appetite for dinner, okay?"

Hiei felt his face twist as Monzan started to pout.

"Stop trying to look cute," Botan said sternly. "You can have another cake if you eat your dinner tonight."

He nodded and Botan turned to Yukina.

"Let me know if he's getting in your way," she said.

"Oh he's no bother at all!" Yukina assured her. "And look at this!"

She walked over to Monzan and handed him a wooden spoon.

"Look how cute he is!" she said.

"He's not cute, he's a warrior," Hiei corrected her.

"Aw but he is cute too," Botan said. "He looks just like his father."

Hiei forgot his concerns about Monzan being treated like a puppy when he saw the look in Botan's eyes distinctly change to another look he had not seen her give him since he had left the paradise reality, a look he had almost forgotten just how much he enjoyed being on the receiving end of. She took his hand and led him out of the temple and he merely stumbled after her, trying to ignore the thought that what was happening seemed too good to be true: because maybe if he thought that way, it might all suddenly stop somehow.

As they entered the forest he let his eyes wander upwards, watching curiously as the sunlight played across the front of their house in a most unique way – the Botan of the near miss reality had called it magical, and he could see why.

"On you go," Botan said suddenly, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"What?" he asked, looking at her in confusion.

"You said that I shouldn't go up the ladder ahead of anyone," she replied.

Hiei pulled a face at her and began wondering what sort of nonsense that other Hiei had told her to make her say such a thing: but then he remembered that he had been the one to tell her that the last time he had been in paradise.

Which could only mean that he was truly back in the place he had been trying to reach.

"You can go up ahead of me," he told her. "Just don't do it ahead of anyone else."

She gave him a funny look but complied regardless, leaving him smirking to himself in a lecherous fashion as he climbed up behind her, enjoying the view he got up her very loose dress. As they reached the front door Hiei felt a little stupid for making such a big deal out of sneaking a look at Botan the way he just had: this was paradise and she was his wife here – his very horny, very loving wife – and he could see all of her any time he wanted to without the need for such underhanded tactics. He followed her inside the house to the living room, where she pointed at a bundle of something fluffy that was sat on the low table in the centre of the room alongside some boxes and a vase of flowers.

"I wasn't expecting you today, I was about to start making Monzan's costume," she said. "You didn't have to take Monzan home, Kurama or Maya would gladly have done it."

"I'm not so sure about that "kindergarten"," Hiei replied. "His teacher there seems slow, weak and stupid. What exactly is she teaching him?"

Botan giggled.

"It's not like that," she said. "It's just a place where human children go. I put Monzan there so that he can play with other children, since it's quite remote up here and he would get bored spending all day around the house with just me for company."

"Why is his name Kuwabara?" Hiei asked, the thought returning to him then. "That woman kept calling me Mister Kuwabara!"

"I tell people that you're Kuwabara's brother," she replied.

"You do what?" Hiei yelped.

"I tell people that you're Kuwabara's brother?"

"Who would believe that? He's cumbersome, clumsy and ugly and I'm… Why would you tell people that I'm his brother?"

"I tell people you're his adopted brother and that I'm your wife. That way I can use his surname. It gets us some privileges around the city if we say we're related to Kazuma Kuwabara."

"Hn, ridiculous."

"I wasn't going to tell you because I knew you'd be upset…"

Hiei saw Botan start to look sad and his anger faded.

"I'm not upset," he lied. "It's fine. Just so long as I don't have to act like his brother, that's fine."

Botan smiled again and he relaxed.

"Did you forget something?" she asked. "I wasn't expecting you today."

Hiei shook his head.

"Will you be staying for dinner?" she asked.

"Yes, obviously," he replied.

"…Oh," she said. "Are you sure? With Kuwabara working late, Yukina isn't cooking, so you'd just be eating here with me and Monzan, and it's my cooking."

"Okay."

"Okay? You still want to stay?"

"Yes."

Botan nodded and waved a hand at the items piled on the table again.

"I have to make that costume," she said. "I was going to just buy a costume, but it's fun to have something original, so I decided to make one myself. I'll do it after dinner though if you're staying here until then."

"I'm staying here forever," Hiei said, silently wondering why she seemed unable to grasp that concept.

"…You're staying the night too?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

"All night?"

"Yes!"

Botan looked down at the items on the table for a long time, so long that Hiei started to wonder if she had fallen asleep standing up. When she did eventually look at him again her face had changed completely and he felt almost afraid at what he saw. She walked around the table and leaned over it, suddenly and violently sweeping her arms across it, sending the vase of flowers crashing into a wall and causing all the other items to scatter on the floor around about her. Hiei started to ask her what had gotten into her but his words turned into a grunt of surprise as she grabbed his shirt and pulled hard. In his confusion he surrendered to her actions, and shortly found himself lying on the table with her on top of him, frantically kissing any part of his face and neck she could get at.

Hiei smiled to himself and let her continue, simply enjoying his victory of finally being where he was supposed to be and finally getting what he had been wanting for so long. He barely cared when she started pushing up his shirt but the moment ended abruptly when she uncovered his bandaged abdomen, the sight of which made her freeze for several seconds.

"You're hurt!" she said, looking into his eyes worriedly.

"It's nothing," he assured her.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't know!" she said.

"It's nothing," he insisted. "Don't worry about it."

Botan looked less than convinced, but as Hiei smoothed his hands up her arms he saw her face changing and she shortly dropped down onto him again. She placed a brief kiss on his lips before moving her head and kissing at his neck. The contact of their lips meeting had been too light and too quick for Hiei's liking and he licked at his lips in an attempt to get more of the taste of her lips into his mouth – but still it was not enough. He grabbed his hands into her hair, freeing it from its already loosen ties, and pulled her head up again, pushing his chin upwards, his lips crashing into hers. He felt her grabbing a little desperately at his arms as he tried to deepen their kiss, and before he could achieve what he had been trying to he felt her slip clumsily to one side.

"Shit!" he cried out as they were parted abruptly and he barely managed to catch her before she fell from the table.

"Oopsie!" she giggled.

Hiei glared at her incredulously, a rush of adrenaline coursing through his body at the thought of what had almost happened.

"Don't look so worried!" Botan said, grabbing at him and righting herself on top of him again.

"You nearly fell!" he growled back.

"Yes, I did," she said, mocking concern in her tone and expression. "I nearly fell a whole 30 centimetres to the ground."

"That's not funny," he insisted when she started to giggle again. "You're pregnant, you idiot!"

Botan started to laugh out loud and Hiei became even more infuriated.

"Oh Hiei, you never worried about things like that before!" she said.

"You're carrying my child, you need to be more careful!" he snapped back irritably.

"Yes, that's true, but you usually don't worry about–"

"I do worry! It's that other Hiei who doesn't care, and he's an asshole!"

"…Wh-what?"

Hiei watched Botan's confused face for a long time before starting to gradually realise why she might be looking at him that way: as far as she was concerned, he was that other Hiei.

"Let's just do this somewhere else," he muttered.

Botan nodded and carefully climbed off of Hiei and the table to allow him to stand. He stood up beside her and as she gave him a small smile he once more lost control of his senses and grabbed her up into his arms, ignoring the half-excited, half-fearful yelp his actions elicited from her, carrying her through to their bedroom: which, he was glad to see, was exactly as he remembered it to be. He carefully laid her on the bed and knelt down between her knees, pausing to check that she was safely and securely in the centre of the bed before lunging at her and savagely tearing off every piece of clothing that concealed her body from his view.

"Hiei!" she cried, lifting her arms in what was probably an attempt to stop him, though it came far too late as he had just finished ripping loose the remainder of her panties.

"What?" he grunted.

She pouted – though she did not exactly look angry.

"You just ruined my dress, Hiei," she said, pointing her hands out at either side of herself at the discarded ragged remains of her clothes. "And I don't have many clothes that fit me now that I'm getting bigger."

She touched her hands to her stomach as though she thought he might have forgotten the point she was trying to make.

"…Do you care?" he asked.

"…Not if you rip your own clothes off like that too," she replied.

Hiei's eyes doubled in size.

"I'm not strong enough to do it myself," Botan pointed out. "Although I would really like to…"

Hiei swallowed hard as he saw Botan's pupils dilate as she ran her eyes over his body in a distinctly erotic fashion, and his hands acted on a will of their own, tearing his shirt apart and hurriedly flinging it away before grabbing at his pants. They did not tear so easily, and so he resorted to opening them and pushing them down to his knees before lowering himself over Botan again, aiming to finish the kiss they had started in the living room. To his satisfaction – and mild surprise – she grabbed at his hair and pulled his mouth to hers, almost immediately slipping her tongue through his lips. It was a passionate kiss but probably a little too forceful and desperate, and their hands grabbed at each with no less urgency. Hiei could not really remember how long it had been since he had last been in paradise – it had probably been no more than a few weeks – but as he lay there kissing and groping eagerly at Botan he felt the strangest notion of time: it felt as though he had been without her for an eternity and yet dragging his fingers over every undulating detail of her body felt like something he had been doing every day since that first time.

And as Hiei slid one hand up Botan's inner thigh and felt the heat radiating off of her he felt his need to have her rise to new heights of desperation. The knowledge that she was so readily aroused by his touch simply reaffirmed to him that returning to paradise had been the right thing to do, and he shortly eased himself into her and let himself go completely.

* * *

Hiei felt wet and sticky – and he suspected that he knew why. The last few weeks had been so hectic he had not realised how much tension had been building in his loins, and he felt as though he had literally exploded after particularly rigorous session with Botan. He could feel her watching him and he subconsciously turned away from her, instead looking at the framed photograph on the nightstand – and he was almost glad of the distraction it provided him with, as noticed something in it that had not occurred to him as odd the last time he had looked at it.

He turned his head to look at Botan to ask her about it and found her smiling at him almost mockingly from her position laid next to him in the bed.

"Were you looking at our wedding photo?" she asked as their eyes met.

"Yes," he replied, silently glad that she was asking about that and not his slightly embarrassing loss of self-control earlier.

"You don't usually look at it," she said.

"It's very strange to me," he said without thinking. "It's the first time I've seen a photograph of myself and Yukina."

"That was the first time we were able to take a photograph of you and Yukina."

Hearing Botan repeat his words back at him made Hiei realise that he probably should not have just blurted them out the way he had and he was silently thankful that they had made sense to her.

"Yukina was always afraid of having her photo taken, remember?" Botan continued. "She always refused before, but she agreed on our wedding day and ever since then she's learned to accept it… Unlike her brother, who still sulks when we try to take his photo!"

Hiei grunted as she poked him in the chest in what was obviously just meant to be a jocular manner but reminded him that he was still tender over most of his torso from the amount of damage he had suffered from all the inter-reality travelling he had been doing.

"I wasn't expecting you here today," Botan said. "Especially not at this time of day. It's a nice surprise though – you were still owe me for promising me more fun and then disappearing during the night and leaving me to wake up all alone and wanting. That was very mean of you."

She feigned anger and Hiei supposed that she expected him to react to it, but her words had left him wondering: he had left her in the middle of the night after promising her "more fun", as she had put it.

"…Yes," he said slowly. "But we had fun before you went to sleep…"

"Yes, we did, but we had to be so quiet," she replied. "And you promised we could let loose the next morning after Monzan went to kindergarten, and then I woke up to find you gone without even a goodbye kiss! That was too cruel."

"You woke up alone too? Hn, that other Hiei is such a stupid bastard."

"…What?"

"Nothing."

Botan gave Hiei a curious look and he made a mental note to never mention that other Hiei out loud again. He found it oddly reassuring to know that, since he had last been to paradise, that other Hiei had not been touching his wife, but at the same time it did seem odd that he had just abandoned her in the middle of the night. Maybe when he had returned to his own reality he had returned in demon world, Hiei mused, or maybe that other Hiei no longer existed since Hiei himself had replaced him when he had visited paradise the first time around, which might make sense as nobody had replaced Hiei when he had left the norm reality.

"I miss you when you're not here," Botan said suddenly.

Hiei met her eyes again, feeling a little startled at both the intensity and implications of her words.

"I understand that we can't have much time together, I've always understood that," she added. "But I still miss you. It's especially hard being pregnant again and taking care of Monzan on my own – not that I'm complaining, it's just that… Monzan adores you Hiei, and he misses you too."

"I missed you while I was away," Hiei told her, no longer caring if that other Hiei would have said the same thing or not. "And I missed Monzan."

"Really?" she echoed, looking both surprised and pleased.

"Absolutely," he said. "I think I might stay in the living world more often."

"Really?" Botan squealed.

"Yes, really," Hiei replied, frowning at her now over-enthusiasm.

"Will you come to Monzan's play?"

"…Monzan's what?"

"His play! He's in a play with the other kids from the kindergarten and he's playing a bunny rabbit. I was going to make his costume today, but I suppose I don't really have time for that now. I'll just buy one ready-made."

"…What is a play?"

"It's when the children go on stage in front of all the parents and act out something."

"I see. So you're going to dress my half-demon son as a "bunny rabbit" and parade him around on a stage with a bunch of human children for the amusement of a gathering of human adults?"

Botan's eyes wandered from Hiei's and she started to take on a slightly guilty expression.

"It's just something that human children do," she said quietly. "And he looks so cute in a costume. I just wanted to show him off, I suppose. He is the most intelligent and the cutest child at his kindergarten."

"Of course he is, but – wait, you're missing the point!"

Botan started to smile again and she looked Hiei in the eye once more.

"I don't want you making a fool of my son," he said sternly. "And isn't it stupid to draw attention to him? He's clearly not human, and wouldn't it make things difficult for you if it became widely known that your son is half-demon?"

"Yes, you're right," Botan replied, looking a little disappointed. "But it's never been a problem before, and I do think it's important for Monzan to have friends his own age. He is still just a child, I don't want to force him to grow up just yet. I appreciate that you want him to be strong and noble like you are, but maybe you should let him have some fun while he's so young."

"I never had friends my own age or fun when I was young," Hiei pointed out.

"But you know that was wrong, and you want something better for you own son, don't you?"

Hiei felt that Botan was, in a very subtle and sweet way, forcing him into a corner to make him agree with her. He could not argue because she was right that he did want his own son to have a better upbringing than he had, but he also did not like the idea of his son being dressed up like an animal that was basically a staple food item.

"Does he have to be a rabbit?" he asked.

"He looks so cute with little bunny ears," Botan replied.

"Can't he be a fox or a dragon or something a bit more functional?"

"If it bothers you that much, I'll talk to his teacher about it. Maybe he can be something else."

"Good."

"…But I'm only going to do that if you come and see the play with me."

Hiei glared at Botan and she smiled sweetly at him, giving him a look that was almost akin to the one Monzan had given her when she had denied him another cake.

"Fine," he said.

"Oh goody!" she squealed, cuddling closer to him. "I usually have to go to these sorts of things alone or with Yukina. I think some people don't believe that I actually have a husband because they never see him."

"I'm not wasting time with other humans," Hiei warned her.

"I just want them to see you," Botan assured him. "Because I'm so proud of you."

She had said her last remark without a trace of cynicism, and Hiei was not sure which surprised him more: the fact that she had meant her words or that fact that he had not expected her to. He then started thinking about how she had challenged Koenma and spirit world to become his wife in this reality and what that must have involved. He thought about the near miss reality where she had done that for him and he had turned his back on her because he was fearful of Mukuro's disapproval of their union, and he truly realised then how terrible that must have been for the Botan of that reality. No wonder she had looked so awful, it was merely a reflection of how she must have felt after losing everything for him only to be betrayed by him.

And, Hiei thought, Mukuro's generally disparaging attitude towards both Botan and Monzan did not seem to be a problem in this reality. Although it no longer mattered why that was – since he had no need to fix anything anywhere as he was already in paradise, where everything was perfect – he still wanted to know, for the sake of his own curiosity, why Mukuro had changed her mind. He supposed that it was down to something that he had done differently, but he had to know exactly what it was.

"I suppose I should go and get Monzan back," Botan said, sitting up slowly. "Of course I don't have much choice of clothes left…"

She threw a smile over her shoulder at Hiei to let him know that she was joking before rising to her feet and walking around the end of the bed to a wardrobe stood in one corner of the room. Hiei stayed where he was and watched her, silently amused that she was so comfortable to be completely naked in front of his eyes. He supposed that she had no reason to be shy, but he had thought that she might try to act coy by covering herself up. She was a strange blend of a nice girl and bad girl that somehow seemed to make sense despite seeming ridiculous.

"Today is Thursday, you know," she said as she started dressing herself.

Hiei did not bother answering her. He had no idea why Thursday was significant and he was too distracted by what he was watching to focus on formulating a response anyway. And Botan did not seem to mind when he said nothing as she began quietly humming to herself, finding a dress that fitted her far faster than she had implied she would be able to. She kept her back to him as she buttoned it up over her chest and as she finished dressing, Hiei heard her make a strange noise.

"This is the problem, you see," she said, turning to face him.

He looked her over but failed to see what she was talking about so said nothing. She reached out and retrieved a clip before lifting her hands to her hair. She started to gather her hair up but stopped as one of the buttons on the front of her dress over her breasts shot off and the material around it, which had already been straining, opened out slightly.

"See?" she said, lowering her arms again. "Nothing fits me any more!"

Hiei stared for several seconds at the opening in her dress, unsure which part of it appealed to him more – the fact that it allowed him to see parts of her skin again or the fact that it had just happened and she had been unable to stop it – but he soon found himself crawling along the bed towards her and pushing his face into the opening that had appeared in her dress, delighting in the gasp of surprise she made as his nose and lips touched against her skin.

"Yukina's all alone, I'm sure she'll enjoy keeping Monzan a little longer," she said, winding her arms around Hiei.

He grinned darkly and pulled her back onto the bed with him, once more glad that he had – or rather that other Hiei had – been sensible enough to choose a wife who's sexual appetite was as insatiable as his own.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Life in paradise continues for Hiei, who discovers that coffee does a good job of keeping him awake which, combined with widening his wound, makes his stay there nicely stable. In a bid to find some answers to his own questions about the creation of paradise he pays a visit to Mukuro, where he gains an unexpected insight into Monzan, Botan, love and that other Hiei… **Chapter 23 – My Favourite Flower**


	23. My Favourite Flower

**A/N:** **Fluff warning**

 **Recap:** Hiei discovered that Monzan was surprisingly fast and he was reunited with paradise Yukina and paradise Botan, who told him that they "borrowed" the surname Kuwabara for the purposes of living in the living world and that she had not seen him since he had left to return to his own reality (ie that other Hiei had not been with her since Hiei had).

* * *

 **Chapter 23: My Favourite Flower**

After spending long enough rekindling his desire for Botan that he started to become hungry, Hiei allowed her to go back to collect Monzan from Yukina so that they could all eat. While she was gone he took the opportunity to quickly snoop around the interior of the tree-house, discovering it to be larger and more equipped than he had guessed it might be. He found nothing of special interest on his way around the various rooms, though he did pause in Monzan's room for some time as he pondered whether or not he was happy about having his own son kept in such a cute and fluffy atmosphere. He eventually decided that it was something he could change later, once he was more settled in this reality.

When Botan and Monzan returned Hiei followed them to the little dining room by the kitchen, where Botan brought out plates of bento, giving Hiei a slightly apologetic smile as she joined them at the table.

"It's not very exciting, I know," she said. "I would have cooked something more substantial if I'd known you were staying for dinner tonight."

"It's fine," Hiei replied, not wishing to worry her.

"I got some cakes from Yukina," she added.

"I don't like sweet things," he said.

"…But you do like Yukina's baking."

Hiei paused, again wondering if that was another quirk of that other Hiei that he would have to learn to adapt to or else try to change. He supposed that what Mukuro had said about it being difficult to assimilate to an alternate version of himself was true: but it was not, as she had said, impossible, and he was going to prove as much by taking over the life that other Hiei had created.

He said no more on the matter, hoping that Botan had not become suspicious of him at all, and for a long time they all ate in silence. Monzan ate everything as greedily as Hiei had witnessed him devour the cake Yukina had given him earlier and so Hiei could not help but notice when the boy stopped suddenly, two thirds of the way through his meal, and picked up a piece of sushi, studying it for a long time before carefully placing it to one side of his plate and then continuing to eat the rest of his food. Hiei turned to Botan and saw that she had stopped eating and was apparently just as confused as he was, as she was looking at the discarded piece of sushi with a curious frown.

"Monzan, sweetie?" she said gently.

Monzan looked up at her but did not stop eating.

"Why aren't you eating that piece of sushi?" she asked him.

"Because it looks like you," he answered her.

"What?" Hiei grunted involuntarily. "That's ridiculous!"

Monzan turned to him and looked up at him with large eyes that contained a hint of obstinacy, which only made the situation seem all the more ludicrous to Hiei.

"This is stupid," he grumbled, picking up the piece of sushi to look at it for himself.

The first thing he noticed was that it was not shaped the same as the sushi he and Botan had been eating and the second thing he noticed was that it had been decorated quite strategically to look like a face. A glance at Monzan's plate showed Hiei that all of the sushi he had looked like faces, but none of them – including the one in Hiei's hand – was a human face.

"I don't see it," he said flatly, looking across the table at Botan, who was looking back at him blankly.

He looked at the sushi again before deciding that it looked mostly like a cat, complete with pointed ears and whiskers. He moved his eyes back to Botan to tell her as much but stopped as he found her pulling a cat face at him and suddenly looking disturbingly like the piece of food in his hand.

Slowly he placed the sushi back onto the edge of Monzan's plate.

Botan started to laugh and tried to hide it behind her hand, apparently under the delusion that Hiei could not see her shoulders shuddering and hear her stifled giggles. Monzan smiled at her and carried on eating and eventually Hiei returned to eating his own food. He felt that what had just happened was quite stupid, and he was sure that he probably should have said as much and demanded that both his wife and son conducted themselves in a more sensible and dignified manner: but for some reason the thought did not linger in his mind and he instead let the moment pass.

He told himself that he was allowing it because it was quite pleasant and something of a relief to see Botan actually look so happy in his presence.

Once they had finished eating Botan told Hiei she had to bath Monzan and by the look on the boy's face Hiei could tell that he wanted no part of that, so he took himself out the back door of the tree-house and sat down by the ladder there, looking out through the trees which were growing darker against the low sun. The forest itself would become impossibly dark once the sun had set, but there was a string of little lanterns around the underside of the roof of the tree-house that made things a little lighter immediately around them. Hiei himself was not bothered by the darkness of the forest – especially since he had spent many nights in infinitely dark forests in his life – but he did not really like the thought of Botan being alone in a dark forest. Which was an odd thought, and even odder still was the thought that followed it unbidden in his mind: he felt slightly reassured about Botan having Monzan with her to protect her.

After some time sitting watching the sky slowly darken, Hiei eventually heard things quieten down in the house and Botan came out to join him, offering him one of Yukina's cakes and some tea, which he took obligingly, deciding that he would have to force himself to eat the cake if he was supposed to like it.

"It's so pretty out here," she said, shuffling as close to him as she could. "We can watch the sunrise and the sunset from each side of the house. I love living here. I'm so glad you chose to make a house for us here."

"I didn't make this house," Hiei replied, hoping that he was stating a fact rather than asking a question.

"Well no, you didn't make it, but it was your idea," she said.

Hiei wanted to ask her more about why it had been his idea to live there and in such a strange house. Their living circumstances were, just like the rest of the paradise reality, strange and not something he had expected he would ever want or like and yet somehow it worked and he did both want and like it. At a loss for a clever way to pose his questions without seeming odd, Hiei took a bite out of the cake he had been given. He chewed three times before stopping.

"Are you alright?" Botan asked, tilting her head in confusion as he glared at his cake, his cheeks still bulging with the part he was still holding in his mouth.

"I like this," he said, his voice muffled through the food.

"I know you do, silly!" she said.

Hiei narrowed his eyes sceptically and continued to chew. He did like it, though he had been expecting not to. Eating something like that had never been something he would have wanted to do, and in a small, symbolic sort of way, he saw that this was just another decision that other Hiei had made differently to him and had a good outcome from.

That other Hiei was such a bastard.

Together he and Botan ate and drank in silence, watching the sun go down. Once Hiei had finished both his muffin and his tea – which, he noted, Botan had made the exact way he liked it – he started to feel decidedly more awake, which was perfect for his plan of not sleeping that night. Botan, on the other hand, seemed to be getting sleepy at his side as she was leaning increasingly heavily on him.

"Are there any more cakes?" he asked her, wondering if eating some more might help keep him awake.

"No," she replied through a yawn. "If I keep them in the house Monzan finds a way to steal them, and all that sugar keeps him up all night."

"…Sugar keeps him awake?" Hiei asked, trying to sound only mildly interested.

"Yes," Botan replied. "And so does caffeine, which is why I don't let him drink sodas. I left him with Yusuke one day for a few hours and when I got back I found out Yusuke had given him coffee ice cream and a can of orange soda. He didn't sleep for two days and I couldn't put him to kindergarten because he was just too hyperactive… It was a very long two days…"

Hiei nodded, his brain filtering out the salient points of what Botan had just told him: coffee, sugar and soda kept demons awake all night.

"Do we have any coffee or soda?" he asked.

"No soda, but I do have some coffee," she replied. "I'll make you some in the morning if you like."

"Make me some now."

"Now? Are you sure? You won't sleep!"

Botan lifted herself from Hiei and met his eyes with a look of worry, but he was determined that she would oblige his request. He needed to stay awake to stop his wound from healing faster and he needed to stay awake so that he could sneak out once she had fallen asleep and widen and redress his wound.

"It's fine," he insisted. "I want the coffee."

"Okay, come on inside," she said.

Hiei followed her back into the house to the kitchen, watching impatiently as she boiled water and spooned some brown granules into a mug. He made a point of watching her carefully so that he could learn how to prepare coffee himself, as he suspected that he would need to consume some every day to maintain his existence in paradise.

"Now it's quite a strong flavour and it's hot, so be careful," Botan warned as she handed him a mug of black liquid.

Hiei sniffed at it cautiously but found that it smelt tolerable enough and so he gulped down a sizeable amount. The heat of the drink made no difference to him as he had a high tolerance for high temperatures – being a fire demon – but the taste of the drink was quite shocking and he spluttered slightly as his body threatened to wretch it back up.

"I did warn you," Botan reminded him. "Here, you take sugar in your tea, let me put some sugar in that for you, you might like it better that way."

Hiei handed her the mug and focussed on keeping down what he had drunk as she added the sugar and stirred it through.

"Here we are, try again," she said, handing him back the mug.

Hiei took it back and again gulped down a large amount, finding that the second time around it tasted exactly as bad as it had the first, only sweeter – and not in a good way.

"But don't blame me when you can't sleep tonight," Botan warned him.

Hiei finished the mug in one go.

"…Well if you do like it we have plenty," Botan said slowly.

"Good," he replied, passing her his empty mug.

"I don't think you should have any more right now though," she said as she took the mug from him. "I'll make you some in the morning if you like."

Hiei twitched slightly. He could already feel the sugar and caffeine passing into his bloodstream and it felt worryingly exhilarating. He eyed Botan over, feeling slightly disappointed that she looked so sleepy, but also pleased that he had found a solution that would make his stay in paradise so much easier.

"I'm going to bed now, are you coming too?" Botan asked him.

"Okay," he agreed.

"I just have to check that Monzan is still asleep."

Botan started to move through the house and Hiei followed her, which she apparently found surprising as she stopped suddenly and looked back at him with a startled look on her face.

"A-aren't you going to bed?" she asked him.

"You said we have to check that Monzan is asleep," he replied.

"You don't have to come with me," she said.

"I want to come with you."

Botan's face twisted and for a brief moment she looked horrified, but her face shortly changed again and she began smiling and slid one of her arms through one of Hiei's.

"That's so sweet of you!" she said.

He was unsure why she was so pleased about his response but figured that it was not worth worrying about. Together they moved quietly to the partially open door to Monzan's room, where they found him lying on his back, his head rolled to one side and his arms up on the pillow at either side of his head, clearly deeply asleep. Botan smiled at Hiei and indicated that they should go back with a nod of her head. Once they had moved sufficiently far enough away from his room she tightened her hold of Hiei's arm.

"Isn't he just adorable?" she said. "He's so cute in his little pyjamas with his little hands and his little feet and his little nose and his little–"

"Okay, yes, he's small," Hiei cut her off.

"But he's so cute!" Botan said, as though she had not even heard him.

"He has potential," Hiei said, focusing on the one important thing he could see in the boy.

"Yes he does," she agreed, suddenly sounding much more serious. "He makes me very proud."

Hiei had an idea brewing in the back of his mind but he did not intend to share it with Botan. Instead he got into bed with her and simply held her in his arms until she fell asleep: he could tell that she was too tired for it to be worth his while trying to coax her into any more devious behaviour that night, but he intended to make up for that the next day. And once she was asleep Hiei carefully and quietly slid from the bed and left the house altogether, taking himself through the woods to the beach beyond and there using his sword to carefully deepen and widen his wound before reapplying the bandages and hiding the damage as best he could. He did not know if there were any fresh bandages to be had in the tree-house but he did know where he would find some, and that was somewhere that he intended to visit the next day.

And with that thought Hiei set about shadow fencing to make use of the excess energy he had until he saw the sky change with the hints of sunrise, at which point he ran back to the tree-house and carefully made his way back inside and back into bed with Botan, who had slept through it all in blissful ignorance. Hiei managed to get hold of her again without waking her, and, since it would soon be morning, he allowed himself to fall asleep, knowing that it would not be for long, and to allow her to wake up with him having seemed to have slept there all night.

* * *

Hiei awoke with a start, panicking slightly when he found himself alone in bed. He sat up abruptly, momentarily regretting his action as it reminded him of the damage he was still suffering him over his mid-section. A quick glance about himself told him that he was still in his bedroom in the tree-house and he was still wearing a wedding ring and he still only had one hiruiseki around his neck, all of which were good signs.

He then got out of bed, pulling on his pants and a shirt and then staggering out of the room, soon catching the scent of warm food and following it to the dining room, where he found Botan and Monzan eating breakfast.

"Well good morning mister sleepy-head!" Botan greeted him.

"You didn't wake me," Hiei answered her, sitting into a chair facing her.

"You looked so peaceful, I thought I would let you sleep a little longer," she replied. "I thought it might help heal your wound, too… And you looked so cute!"

Hiei started to glare at her but he became distracted when he noticed a glass jug of coffee sitting in the middle of the table. He already had a bowl and a mug in front of him and so he filled the mug with coffee and began drinking, ignoring Botan when she commented on his newly acquired taste for it. He decided to stop after one mug as it did make him quite tense. By then, Botan had started doing something in the kitchen out of his line of sight, leaving him sitting facing Monzan, who was smiling across the table at him almost unblinkingly.

"Is Kuwabara taking Monzan to kindergarten soon?" he called through to Botan.

"Yes, I was just packing a lunch for him," Botan called back.

"Tell him not to bother, I'll take the boy there myself," Hiei said.

Monzan's smile widened and Hiei heard Botan running towards them, and a moment later she poked her head into the room.

"You want to take Monzan to kindergarten?" she asked. "A-are you sure? It's a long way and he has to be there by–"

"It's fine, we'll run," Hiei answered her.

She was giving him a very sceptical look and Hiei could appreciate why: neither the Hiei she knew nor Hiei himself actually wanted to take Monzan to the human kindergarten. But Hiei did not intend to take Monzan to kindergarten at all – but he also did not want Botan to learn of his true intentions, so he continued the lie.

"I'll take him there and I'll take him home afterwards," he added. "I have some things I have to do today."

"…Okay," Botan agreed. "That is sweet, my two favourite boys going for a run together."

Hiei nodded and forced a smile at her as she slipped back out of the room. He then turned to Monzan, studying him for a moment. He was certainly fast and he seemed to have the potential to be strong, and for his age and considering that his mother was a former ferry girl in the body of a human, he did have a remarkably high level of demon energy. He was certainly not something to be ashamed of: Hiei doubted he could have expected any children of his to be any stronger if he had fathered them with a demon woman, and he was determined to prove that point to a certain someone.

Botan reappeared in the room and began hooking the bag Hiei had seen Monzan carrying the day before onto his back again. She gave him a list of orders on how to behave, but the boy seemed to not really be listening, his eyes on Hiei the whole time. Hiei wondered if the kid had any idea what lay ahead of him that day.

"And remember to keep this on," Botan finished, securing a bandana around Monzan's head to conceal his third eye.

She kissed him on the cheek and took his hand, guiding him out of the room.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked Hiei as he followed her along.

"Absolutely," he replied, his eyes still on Monzan, who was looking back at him with the same little smile on his face.

"I can tell Kuwabara to collect him this afternoon," Botan said.

"No need," Hiei insisted. "I'm taking care of this."

"W-well alright then…"

Hiei stood out on the walkway by the rope ladder for a long time, watching Botan expectantly. When she did nothing he gave a small sigh.

"You have to let go of the boy before I can take him anywhere," he pointed out.

Botan laughed but still took a little longer than was necessary to let go of Monzan's hand.

"Be good!" she said as he walked over to Hiei's side. "…Both of you," she added, winking at Hiei.

"Hn," Hiei grunted, turning from her and starting down the ladder.

He made a point of leaving the tree-house sensibly, letting Monzan wave at Botan until she was out of sight. He kept the pretence up until they were halfway down the temple steps before stopping and turning to Monzan, who obediently stopped at his side and looked up at him expectantly.

"You're not going to kindergarten today, boy," Hiei told him.

"But I have to," Monzan replied.

"No you don't," Hiei said. "Today you're coming with me because we have to do something far more important."

Monzan tilted his head slightly in confusion.

"Run with me," Hiei told him.

"Okay!" Monzan eagerly agreed.

Together they ran down the remaining steps and out of the forest. Hiei called out to Monzan to turn left as they neared the road, which understandably confused him, but he followed regardless. Hiei kept going until he found what he sought, stopping there and waiting for Monzan to catch up to him as he had lagged behind slightly. When he did reach him, Hiei was a little surprised to see Monzan look directly at the invisible point in the air slightly above Hiei's head that he had been aiming for. And Hiei was very surprised at what his son said next.

"Are we going to demon world, daddy?"

Hiei tried to hide his shock and remain nonchalant, but he could not help but wonder how Monzan had known that they had reached a portal to demon world and that was where they were about to go.

"Yes," he said. "So climb on my back and I'll take you through the gateway."

"I can jump," Monzan said.

"…Just climb on my back."

Hiei crouched down and gathered Monzan onto his back and then launched them through the portal. He had, ever since visiting the near miss reality, been unable to let go of two things that the paradise reality uniquely had: the first was the strange quirk with Kuwabara and Yukina and the second was Mukuro's attitude towards his family. He did not actually know how accepting paradise Mukuro was of Monzan or Botan, but he decided he was going to deal with the problem the best way he knew how: by confronting it head on with definite actions.

* * *

After some time running with Monzan on his back Hiei finally reached the gates of Mukuro's fortress, where he set Monzan down on the ground and took his hand as he had seen Botan do. It made Monzan strangely happy to be holding his hand but Hiei did not bother wondering why. Instead he continued to walk into the fortress yard, keeping Monzan close at his side as he walked.

"Hey Hiei," one of Mukuro's elite soldiers greeted him.

Hiei nodded at the soldier, mainly because he could never remember the names of any of them even though they all seemed to know who he was: but he supposed that was because he was more important than they were, and they ought to know him by name.

"Good morning Mister Zetsumei."

Hiei glared down curiously at Monzan, finding him waving at the soldier they had just passed. He turned to the soldier and saw him waving back, which only made the situation seem even more bizarre.

"Hiei, back again, huh?" the guard at the fortress doors said as he neared him.

Again Hiei nodded in reply and again he felt stupid as his son addressed the guard by name, at which the guard nodded back to him. Hiei continued into the entranceway, finding three more of Mukuro's elite soldiers.

"Hiei," one of them said.

Hiei nodded in reply.

"Hey, you feeling better today, Hiei?" another one asked.

Hiei nodded again.

"Mukuro was looking for you yesterday, Hiei," the third said.

Hiei nodded.

"Good morning Mister Kyoukou, Mister Ittosai and Mister Nakigara," Monzan said.

Hiei gulped nervously as all three soldiers waved at Monzan, who was waving at them in the same way he had waved at his own mother. It occurred to him that one of two things was happening, and each was as embarrassing as the other: either his son was making up names for everyone they met or he actually knew who they were even though Hiei himself did not.

The journey up to Mukuro's office took Hiei longer than usual, mainly because Monzan insisted on greeting every demon they passed, and he had a name for them all. None of them seemed confused or offended, but Hiei was unsure if that was because they knew Monzan or because they were too scared to correct Hiei's son for miscalling them. When they did eventually reach Mukuro's office, Hiei found her in there alone, reading over something. She looked up as Hiei entered, her face flat and her expression mildly unimpressed.

"Decided to return, have we?" she asked.

"Yes, and I've brought my son with me," Hiei replied, pointing at Monzan.

Mukuro turned her head slightly, her eyes falling to Monzan. There was a short moment of awkward silence before Monzan pulled his hand from Hiei's and ran across the room, shouting out two words that Hiei thought might scar him mentally for life.

"Aunty Mukuro!"

Mukuro stood out of her throne and, to Hiei's increasing disbelief, caught Monzan up in her arms, lifting him into a hug.

"Hey, look at you!" she said. "You've gotten bigger since I last saw you!"

"…What?" Hiei muttered.

"Can I have a kiss?" Mukuro said.

Monzan kissed her on the cheek and Hiei thought he might fall over. Mukuro placed him down again and she turned to glare at Hiei.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she hissed.

Hiei stiffened, too confused and bewildered to answer her.

"It's been over six months since you last brought him here," she continued. "You know he likes it here and he should be coming here regularly."

"You've already met…?" Hiei began. "No, I don't understand…"

Mukuro rolled her eyes at him before turning back to Monzan and starting to talk to him about all sorts of nonsense that seemed to please him. Hiei watched them talk for several minutes, the whole time his mind replaying the moment Mukuro had said to him "either you got rid of them or you left my service, because I would have no need for anyone foolish enough to devote his entire life to a spirit and a half-human child" over and over.

Just what had that other Hiei done to change Mukuro's mind so drastically?

"Hiei, why did you bring him here dressed like this?" Mukuro asked suddenly, turning to Hiei to give him another glare he thought was too intense and unnecessary for the situation.

"That's how his mother dressed him," Hiei replied, unsure of how else to respond.

"I doubt that," Mukuro scoffed. "Botan knows to dress him appropriately when he's coming here. Does she even know that you've taken him here today?"

Hiei started to sweat a little.

"…Not exactly, no," he confessed.

"Well I can probably find clothes for him," Mukuro said with a sigh. "He's grown a lot since he was last here, his old clothes here won't fit him any more."

"We're going to play swords," Monzan said to Hiei.

Hiei did not like to hear the word "play" used in the same sentence as the word "sword" – well, not unless it was in the sentence "I'm going to play my sword along your throat".

"Do you want to watch us play, Hiei?" Mukuro asked.

"Hn, I don't like games," Hiei stubbornly replied.

"Aw, but I've been practising and I'm really, really fast now," Monzan said, pouting slightly in the same way Botan often did.

"Come on Hiei, don't be such an ass," Mukuro said flatly.

Hiei subconsciously touched a hand to the wound on his abdomen, silently wondering if he had somehow passed into another reality since arriving in demon world: one where everything and everyone was completely backward. He was so confused that he followed Mukuro and Monzan when they left her office, enduring more instances of his son greeting demons around the fortress by name as they passed them. Hiei only started to come to his senses again when they began descending the steps to the basement, and the sounds of ongoing sparring sessions began drifting up to them.

"What are you doing?" he asked Mukuro. "Why are you taking us down here?"

"Monzan said he's been practising," Mukuro replied. "So let's see how much he's learnt since he last came here."

"…Learnt about what?" Hiei asked. "Practised what?"

Hiei was starting to grow concerned. Monzan was fast and clearly capable of becoming a warrior, but he was also a cake-loving, soft-heated, half-human boy who thought sock-puppets were fascinating, and the idea of him being in the basement of Mukuro's fortress amongst seasoned A class and S class demons gave Hiei that same feeling he had felt when Monzan had been running through the city alone the day before. Only worse, because A class and S class demons were far more dangerous than cars, buses or trains.

"Get me some short swords," Mukuro said to a demon by the foot of the steps. "And you," she said to another demon waiting there. "Go in there and gather up everyone who thinks they are any good with a blade."

"Do what?" Hiei echoed.

"I'm going to find Monzan some clothes," Mukuro said.

"…What?"

Hiei stayed where he was as Mukuro walked off into a room at the side of the stairwell, followed closely by Monzan, who looked too happy to have any possible concept of where he was and what seemed to be happening. Hiei tried not to think about how upset Botan would be if she knew what sort of mess Hiei had gotten their son into, but his fears were only magnified when a lizard demon appeared at his side carrying a basket filled with short swords.

"Hey, are these for you, little guy?" he asked.

"No, you insolent bastard," Hiei growled, snatching the basket from him.

The lizard demon shirked back from Hiei, who continued to glare at him until he was out of sight. He then looked down at the bucket of swords, one overwhelming thought rising to the forefront of his mind: this was paradise, and with his one irrational decision to take Monzan to demon world, he was starting to turn it into the norm reality already.

"Pick a weapon."

Hiei looked up at Mukuro as she approached him, glaring at her accusingly. She kept her eyes down and as he felt the basket being tugged from his hand Hiei saw why: she had dressed Monzan in clothes not too dissimilar from Hiei's own and she had apparently given him the impression that he was fit to be where he was in a competitive sense.

"This one," Monzan said suddenly, retrieving a sword that was shorter than Hiei's own but still slightly too long for such a small child to wield effectively.

"Are you sure?" Mukuro asked him.

He nodded and smiled and Mukuro turned around and started into the basement, Monzan trailing after her. Hiei stood on the same spot, his mouth working through a series of objections and reservations he was thinking but his voice failing him every time. He saw a selection of about 11 lower A class demons standing in a line, swords drawn, and one mid A class demon Hiei recognised as a decent swordsman: and also someone Hiei recognised as having absolutely no morals, someone who was likely to skewer Monzan onto his sword and eat him like a kebab.

Hiei starting shaking his head and walking towards them but before he had taken even a few steps Monzan had leapt into the midst of all 12 sword-bearing demons and they had swarmed over him, obscuring him from sight. Hiei whipped out his own sword and ran at the melee, only to be smacked down to the ground by Mukuro.

"What are you doing, idiot?" she asked him, looking down at him disdainfully as he lay at her feet.

"I was just about to ask you the same thing, idiot!" he growled back.

He got to his feet and started forwards, stopping again as Mukuro slapped a hand against his gut, hitting his wound painfully, causing him to wince and hesitate long enough to actually see what was happening in front of him.

Monzan was actually fighting the other demons, and he was, shockingly, beating them down with unexpected agility and efficiency.

Hiei slowly tilted his head to one side as he watched his son duck and parry his way through his opponents, at one point grabbing a hand around the blade of a sword thrust towards his chest and tugging it forwards to confuse and retaliate upon his would-be attacker.

"I don't think he's been practising much," Mukuro commented dryly. "He finished off 15 demons of the same power levels six months ago in less time than this."

"…What?" Hiei echoed.

Hiei could not decide what was surprising him more: Monzan's sudden transformation into a violent and efficient murderer or Mukuro's nonchalance about it. Within minutes of the whole mess having begun, Monzan was left standing in the centre of 12 fallen bodies, looking slightly displeased. He pouted and pointed his sword at Mukuro and said something that made Hiei snort out a short laugh involuntarily at the utter ridiculousness of it.

"You underestimate me."

"You think you could have handled more?" Mukuro asked him.

Monzan nodded and began picking his way through the fallen bodies. Hiei then noticed something else that only made the situation even more bizarre.

"He didn't kill any of them," he said aloud. "He just… Knocked them out…"

"I believe his mother taught him that," Mukuro replied.

Hiei stiffened then, feeling a degree of normality returning to his situation. Apparently in paradise, Mukuro had accepted Monzan but not Botan.

"You still disapprove of my choice of wife?" he asked.

Mukuro turned to him, looking genuinely surprised at his question.

"I always did, Hiei," she said. "Until that little trick she pulled with "my favourite flower"."

Hiei felt himself lose any ground that he had been gaining and once more become immersed in confusion.

"I thought she was just a mere moderately attractive, unintelligent, skittish ferry girl," Mukuro continued, once more giving Hiei a sense of déjà vu as she used the same description of Botan that she had in other realities including Hiei's own. "You know I was furious when you went ahead and married her without even bothering to tell me about it when you already knew that I thought she was an unsuitable partner for you. I kept thinking you would grow tired of her as you have so many other things in your life, but of course you never did, did you? And when you told me that she was pregnant… I wanted no part of that, and only agreed to keep you here during the birth because I believed that the strain of it might kill her. Botan changed my opinion of her and Monzan two years ago by doing something you probably didn't even notice."

"Two years ago?" Hiei muttered.

He had, according to Botan, been married to her for eight years, meaning that even here in paradise Mukuro had held a grudge against him for six years for marrying Botan and having a family with her. And apparently the different decision that other Hiei had made was just to marry her anyway and damn the consequences of what Mukuro or anyone else thought.

"That was the first time you took Monzan here," Mukuro said. "You took him in here shouting that I would have to learn to accept him, remember? You thought that bringing him to me was your idea at resolving the problem and you were so proud of yourself when it seemed to work. But it wasn't your actions or your words that changed my mind that day. It wasn't even Monzan in his fluffy little panda-face pyjamas falling asleep in my arms that changed my mind. It was the message and gift your wife sent to me."

Hiei made to ask for more information but the look on Mukuro's face made him stop. He had never thought Botan capable of sending any sort of gift and message that would change the opinion of a woman like Mukuro, and he was secretly quite impressed that she had managed such a feat.

"She gave Monzan a bunch of flowers and a card to give to me," Mukuro continued. "Probably because she thought it would be even more effective coming from an innocent child. They were flowers from the living world, and the card simply said "Lady Mukuro, please accept this gift: a bunch of your favourite flowers, from Botan"."

"…You like living world flowers?" Hiei asked.

"No, you idiot, I hate flowers!" Mukuro spat, eying him as though she thought he was infinitely stupid. "I don't even know what those flowers were called, but they bore a striking resemblance to the vervain of demon world, and they were white. Clearly she was sending me a message, and I appreciated the intelligence, subtlety, submissiveness and yet strength in that message."

"I don't understand."

"I know you don't Hiei, and that's partly why I can see that she's perfect for you. She more than compensates for the areas you lack in. She is more of a diplomat than I had expected her to be. The vervain is the flower of peace and white is the universal colour of surrender. She didn't send those flowers because she thought I might think they were pretty, she sent them because she was trying to tell me that she wanted to make peace with me. It was like the so-called offering of an olive branch, and I admired that. And I can't deny that she has done well by your son, who she has raised pretty much single-handedly."

"Hn…"

Hiei looked down at Monzan, who was opening and closing the fist he had grabbed a sword in, apparently enjoying the way it made blood ooze out of the lacerations he had been left with. Paradise had always seemed like a great way of life to Hiei, but in the last few minutes he had seen a depth to it that he never would have guessed existed. His son was already the strong warrior he had hoped he might one day become and his wife was clever, reliable and insightful, and she had done something Hiei doubted anyone else ever had or ever would: she had out-smarted Mukuro.

"Hiei?" Mukuro said. "Are you alright?"

"I…" he began faintly. "I think I'm in love…"

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei and Monzan spend the day in demon world together and when they eventually get back to the living world they set out to join the others for a weekend break in a place that really confuses and overwhelms Hiei – but clarity finally comes when Kuwabara, Yukina and Botan explain to him what it is and how it came about: and shockingly, it was because of Hiei. **Chapter 24 – The Biggest Snowball**

 **A/N:** Aw, I'm such a dork – Vervain/Verbena is the flower of cooperation in Japan. Also those demon names are random Japanese words for death and another reference to Yo-Jin-Bo (game/novel).


	24. The Biggest Snowball

**A/N:** **The first part of this chapter may seem redundant, but it's actually not – honest. I'm laying the groundwork for part 5 of the story (long way off yet) so it may not seem all that important now, but it will build to something, I promise!**

 **Plot warning…!**

 **Recap:** Hiei took Monzan to demon world to find out what Mukuro really thought of him and Botan, and he was shocked to learn that Mukuro had already met Monzan and welcomed his presence and she held Botan in high regard and respected her for a gesture she had made through Hiei and Monzan: the intelligence and thoughtfulness of which made Hiei see more depth in Botan and (start to) realise that he loves her.

* * *

 **Chapter 24: The Biggest Snowball**

"I want to see the radio lady."

Hiei scrunched up his face in confusion, but Monzan continued to beam up at him, looking very like his always cheerful mother. The boy's knowledge of demon world geography, culture and ethics were shocking to say the least, and his unwavering confidence in the face of everything around him was almost unbelievable. Hiei had expected him to be frightened or overwhelmed or even ignorantly over-confident, but instead he was no different in demon world to how he was in the living world.

"I don't understand it either," Mukuro muttered.

Hiei turned to her in the hope that she might offer some sort of explanation for what Monzan had just said, but instead she simply shook her head as she looked down at him.

"Daddy, can we go see the radio lady?" Monzan asked, grabbing a handful of one leg of Hiei's pants and tugging at it in an almost annoying way.

"I don't know what he's talking about," Hiei muttered to Mukuro.

"He wants to visit that loud-mouthed journalist woman," Mukuro explained. "He really likes her for some reason and not just because she pretends to let him talk on the radio or television."

"…Loud-mouthed journalist woman?"

"She's still out at the arena in Gandara. The border patrol route passes it, or you could just run there yourself."

Hiei looked down at Monzan's increasingly pleading face, and although the boy had never behaved that way before, Hiei was always slightly worried that he might dissolve into tears and start throwing a temper tantrum, and as he had no idea how to deal with such a situation, he decided to just let him have what he wanted, especially since it was not something terribly stupid. He hoped.

"The arena in Gandara?" he asked, turning to Mukuro.

"The place they held the drawings for the demon world tournament that Enki won and the place they broadcast coverage of any organised tournaments from," Mukuro replied.

Hiei nodded and then looked down at Monzan.

"Okay, let's go," he said.

Monzan's smile widened and he finally released Hiei's pants, which was something of a relief, but he then started running off apparently in the direction of the arena. Hiei gave Mukuro one last confused look, at which she shrugged and shook her head.

"I have no idea why he likes her so much, she's an idiot and she talks too much," she said.

Hiei hesitated but Mukuro said no more and so he ran on in pursuit of his son, catching up to him and slowing slightly to keep pace with him – the boy was fast, but not as fast as Hiei. Within a few hours they had reached the border between Mukuro's territory and Yomi's, and the arena was visible on the horizon deeper into Gandara. Revisiting it felt quite strange to Hiei for several reasons: first of all, in his own reality he had been banned from Yomi's territory for so long he felt like he was committing a crime wandering into it again; secondly he had not visited the arena since drawing his placing for the demon world tournament where he had faced and been defeated by Mukuro; and finally he had never expected that the first time he did return there it would be with his own son.

Hiei and Monzan slowed to a walk as they entered the arena, and at first Hiei thought that his son had made a mistake: the stalls were empty, the large monitor was blank and the air was still and silent. He looked down at Monzan expectantly and saw him looking about the arena before breaking into a grin and running off across the arena floor. Hiei turned expectantly, his face twisting involuntarily as he saw a woman waiting for Monzan with open arms.

It was that irksome, loud-mouthed, brainless excuse for a fox demon who had miscalled so many of the bouts Hiei had fought in during the dark tournament.

She caught Monzan in a hug and lifted him up, spinning him around before placing him down again and ruffling his hair. She knelt down in front of him, bringing her face level with his and began talking at him in a stupid voice – a voice more stupid than the one she usually spoke in – and he seemed pleased with it. Hiei started to walk over to join them, all the while wondering what sort of idiot his son was to want to spend time in the company of such a weak and worthless creature: but when he saw her pull a cat face that looked a little too much like Botan's and saw Monzan clapping his hands in appreciation, Hiei finally understood the attraction.

"Hi Hiei," she greeted Hiei as he neared them. "Haven't seen you in a long time."

"Hn," Hiei replied.

"Still the sweet-talking, smooth operating charmer, huh?" she responded, grinning up at him sarcastically.

"I wasn't aware that we were acquainted," he said flatly.

"We're not," she said, her grin dropping. "I don't much like your wife, either. She was an interfering nag from what I can remember. You little boy is really cute though, and he's turning into a brutal fighter which is just too perfect."

Hiei sighed and moved away from them, sitting down against the wall by the perimeter of the arena floor. He closed his eyes and rested his head back against the wall, being sure to keep himself awake by listening to what Monzan was talking about with the woman: it was mostly just nonsense and blood, but after a while she told him that she would let him talk on the television, and Hiei was suddenly subjected to the woman's shrill voice booming out of the sound system around the arena. He opened his eyes and saw that the screen ahead of him was suddenly illuminated, showing the woman ranting into a microphone with Monzan at her side. Hiei started to grow concerned and slowly stood up, something about what was happening feeling slightly familiar in a sickening sort of way.

"And without further ado, people of demon world," the woman said. "I give to you, live from Gandara, Monzan!"

Hiei balked as she handed the microphone to Monzan, who began talking utter gibberish, apparently broadcasting his idiocy across the whole of demon world. Hiei took out his sword and pointed it at the woman's throat, only growing more irate when she barely looked concerned by his threat.

"What are you doing, you idiot?" he snarled at her. "You can't broadcast this!"

She gave him a slightly withering look before pushing aside his sword and leaning closer to him.

"I'm not really broadcasting it, I'm just pretending to for fun," she whispered. "He likes it. I flip a switch to cut the feed, and he gets to think that he's a big celebrity on the television… Why do you never understand that, no matter how many times I explain it to you?"

Hiei narrowed his eyes at her, giving her a glare that told her how idiotic he considered her to be: he was, however, silently glad that she had said that other Hiei never understood what she was doing either, because at least that had excused his asking her about it. He decided to let the farce continue a little longer, but he was conscious of time, and as it had taken several hours to get to where he was, he knew that, by the time he got back to Mukuro's territory and changed Monzan back into his human clothes and then returned to the living world, it would be dangerously past the time of day he had collected Monzan from kindergarten the day before.

When he heard his son start to sing – and in a foreign language, no less – Hiei decided it was time to end the charade.

"We're leaving," he said sternly.

Monzan moaned and tried pouting at him but Hiei ignored it, taking the microphone from his hand and throwing it away into the stands.

"Hey!" the woman protested. "That was unnecessary, you prick!"

Taking Monzan's hand, Hiei dragged him out of the arena building, only stopping once they were a considerable distance from it. He looked down at Monzan, finding him still looking a little sulky.

"I'm hungry," he moaned.

"You can eat when we get home," Hiei replied.

"But I'm too hungry to move," Monzan said.

"…I'm not carrying you. If we run, we'll be back soon."

"But I'm hungry now–"

"Just run."

Monzan tried pouting one last time but when he saw that it was not going to work he did as Hiei had asked and started running back towards Mukuro's headquarters. Hiei followed after him, silently wishing that he had not bothered taking the boy to see that idiot woman: not only had it been pointless but it had wasted a worrying about of time, and Hiei did not like the thought of Botan worrying about why her son had not come home when he was meant to. He was also worried that she might, out of desperation, contact that stupid "teacher" at the kindergarten, who would probably tell her that Monzan had not been to kindergarten at all that day, and that would only make Botan worry more.

Hiei grabbed Monzan up and ran faster.

* * *

Back at Mukuro's fortress Hiei watched, secretly hungrily, as Monzan ate the lunch Botan had packed for him. He ate it almost deliberately slowly and either did not notice that Hiei was hungry too or did not care, as he never attempted to share any of it. Just as Hiei was contemplating just taking some of the food, he was interrupted by the arrival of a familiar but unexpected guest.

"Hey, I thought I'd find you here," Yusuke greeted him.

"What are you doing here?" Hiei asked.

"I could ask you the same thing, Hiei," Yusuke replied. "I got a call from Botan saying that the kindergarten teacher called her because Monzan didn't go to kindergarten this morning, and they wanted to know why. Botan's panicking, she thinks you took Monzan there like you were meant to but he ran away or got eaten by a monster or something… You know Botan…"

"He learned more here than he would spending a day with that weak and stupid human "teacher"," Hiei sneered.

"Possibly true, but you could have taken him here tomorrow, since tomorrow is Saturday, and Monzan doesn't have kindergarten tomorrow."

Hiei felt a little stupid then but said nothing and hid his own awkwardness behind a mask of indifference.

"I'll tell Botan you're both here and you're both okay," Yusuke said, apparently deciding not to tease him about his mistake: which was a relief for Hiei. "We're all spending the weekend at the lodge, we're leaving tonight, so unless you're staying here all weekend, you need to get back to the living world soon, otherwise you'll have to run to the lodge yourself."

"The… Lodge…?" Hiei muttered, unable to contain his confusion.

"I want to go to the lodge!" Monzan instantly responded.

"We're leaving in about an hour," Yusuke told Hiei. "Get back before then or meet us there. This is the last time we'll ever be able to go there, the guy's selling the place, so it would be good to have everyone there this time."

Hiei nodded slowly, but he was no less confused. Monzan was so excited he had forgotten about his lunch, and Hiei wondered if he might manage to steal the remains of it from him: despite her modest claims, Botan's cooking was quite delectable, and Hiei's hunger was steadily increasing.

"So make the effort Hiei," Yusuke added, distracting Hiei again from Monzan's lunch. "Come to the lodge and let's have one last weekend all together, yeah?"

Hiei frowned slightly, finding Yusuke's suggestion oddly ironic. He could not be sure what it was exactly about his suggestion that he found so profound, but Hiei started to feel a little numb as he watched several of Mukuro's highest-ranking soldiers walk by behind Yusuke – some of whom were long dead from fighting in the war in Hiei's own reality – and seeing them so at ease and Yusuke standing in Mukuro's fortress as a welcomed guest rather than as a prisoner of war to be tortured (which would be the only circumstances under which he would ever appear there in the norm reality) was supremely surreal. For several seconds Hiei simply stood watching the scene unfold, almost feeling as though he was watching someone else's memories of something far away using his jagan eye. What he was looking at now, he thought, was something that could never happen back in his own reality and never would happen back in his own reality.

Hiei felt a strange tugging sensation in his chest as he considered how ridiculously different the paradise reality was from his own, and how truly awful things had become back there. He supposed that the differences had come about slowly over many years – the various other realities he had visited had proved as much – and, as both realities had come about from his own decisions, Hiei supposed that he actually was to blame for the norm reality being as tragic as it was. The two realities had deviated from each other over just one decision, but the snowball effect of those differences over ten years had become insurmountable.

He felt cheated that he had never had the chance to notice what had been going wrong with his own reality long ago, because maybe he could have stopped it becoming as bad as it had.

He was glad to be back in paradise, but the knowledge that the norm reality was continuing, and probably continuing to get worse, in his absence was quite a disturbing one. He chose to forget about it: he was free of it and he not longer needed to think of it.

But somehow he wondered if he could ever truly forget about it.

"Thanks, kid," Yusuke said, snatching an egg-roll from Monzan's lunchbox.

Monzan glared at him but Yusuke ignored it and waved a hand at Hiei, walking away from them and chewing through his stolen food. Hiei watched him go, walking casually, slowly, comfortably and with his head held high, calling out to a few demons he apparently recognised as he went.

Paradise was perfect.

The level of peace and the strength of the relations between the rulers of demon world were unparalleled, and Hiei supposed that was because the war had been averted. Hiei found himself strangely curious about what exactly had happened to stop the war and to make things so great. He had, of course, never cared for politics or fancy words – and he already knew that fancy words had played a part on stopping the war – but he was curious regardless. He wanted to spend time finding out why, if only to satisfy his curiosity, but as he thought about what Yusuke had told him about Botan fretting over her son, he decided to exercise some patience and self-control – something he was aware that he rarely did – and simply take the boy home.

He sat down next to Monzan on the low bench he was perched on and waited for him to finish his lunch.

* * *

The journey back to the living world took Hiei longer than he had expected or hoped that it would. Monzan was slower at first, presumably from indigestion, Hiei had thought bitterly, and by the time he had started to speed up, it was already well into the evening and the sun was starting to set. When they arrived back at the tree-house the lanterns around the roof had illuminated and the forest had grown quite dark by comparison. Inside the house Hiei had found no trace of Botan, only two bags sat on the sofa in the living room with a note attached to them.

"I packed some clothes for you both, check and take with you if you decide to join us, we'll be at the lodge all weekend," he read aloud. "It would be super if you could come along, this is the last time we will ever be able to stay there, and it's such fun when we're all together. Hope you can make it, love Botan."

Hiei lowered the note and staggered back a step in shock as he found that Monzan had already strapped his own bag to his back and he had gathered up Hiei's bag, cradling it in his arms like a baby.

"Let's go, daddy," he insisted.

Hiei had no idea where, or even what, "the lodge" was. The old lady's temple was the place the old team had usually had their reunion gatherings and it had been where they had all shared a meal on his first visit to paradise, and it was where Yukina and Kuwabara lived and it was close to where Hiei, Botan and Monzan lived – so why had the others suddenly decided to go somewhere else to gather together, he wondered? Obviously it was something they had done several times before, because Monzan seemed to understand what it was and he was excited to be going back.

Hiei hoped then that the boy knew how to get there.

He took his bag from his son and put his arms through the straps, nodding at him to confirm that he was ready to go. Monzan started without any further prompting and so Hiei simply followed after him. He supposed that, provided it was not too far away, he could use his jagan eye to locate it if the boy failed, but he decided to trust Monzan – initially at least – to lead him to their destination.

Hiei followed Monzan all the way out of the temple grounds and along the road to the city, nothing around him seeming any more significant than usual until he reached the building Kuwabara always worked in when he met him in any other reality: and there Hiei stopped short, barely noticing or even caring that Monzan had not noticed his halt and was running on alone without him.

Something was different. There was something different about the building, something unique in this reality that Hiei had never noticed in any other. He moved closer to the building and looked up at the window Kuwabara usually sat by, thinking that perhaps the fact that the window was in darkness was the difference in this reality, since usually it was illuminated and usually Kuwabara was sat there. Nothing else specific seemed different, but Hiei felt that he was missing something. He had visited the building so many times over the last few weeks, he supposed that it had just become familiar to him, and even a minor change would seem significant: but still he could not pinpoint what it was.

After several minutes of failing to find any answers, Hiei finally realised that Monzan had continued running at his fullest speed and was now a considerable distance from him, and in a slight panic, he tore off at his own top speed in a bid to catch up to him. Letting Monzan get so far ahead was concerning, but it was also, in a small way, reassuring, because the boy's confidence proved that he did know where he was going, and that he ought to lead Hiei there without the need for him asking awkward questions that he was probably meant to already know the answers to.

And as he ran, Hiei felt a strange sense of déjà vu – but not in the way that he usually did when he was listening to someone repeat something he had already heard them say in another reality, rather he felt as though he was running a route that he had run before. Recently.

After about an hour Hiei caught up to Monzan and slowed his pace to run alongside him. Moving slower seemed to only make him more aware of his surroundings, and Hiei started to become suspicious when he found himself making a left-turn a step ahead of his son making the same move. They were moving further away from the cities and towns and into farmland and mountainous rural expanses that stretched out into the darkness of the night. It was clearly not a well-frequented part of the living world, but it was familiar nonetheless.

At another turn that Hiei found himself making ahead of Monzan, he started to hear a list of instructions inside his head: follow the west-bound road out of the city to the intersection, cross the road under the bridge and follow the road there to the outskirts of the next town, turn left and follow the mountain road. The list continued inside his head, and for some reason Hiei associated it with Keiko. Maybe this "lodge" had something to do with her, he decided.

Hiei and Monzan ran on for almost another hour before Hiei started to realise where they were going: and as they were in such a uniquely remote location, there was no denying it. They were going to that strange wooden house on legs. Hiei could not remember anyone being linked to it in any way in any of the other realities he had visited, and, more specifically, in the near miss reality, Keiko had been the one to direct him to it, and she had referred to it as a "famous singer's house". It was the same house from that brochure Kuwabara had shown him in the norm reality, and he had called it a celebrity's house too: so why then, in paradise, was it a place that Monzan knew so well?

Hiei and Monzan ran around an arcing bend in the road and as it straightened out again the house, and their apparent destination, came fully into Hiei's sight. Monzan ran on and even ran into the house, but Hiei stumbled to a halt so awkwardly he fell to one knee. He quickly got to his feet again, but his confusion and awe were no less overwhelming as he stared unblinkingly at the house ahead of him.

It was a wooden house on legs, but it was an entirely different wooden house on legs to the one present in all the other realities – which made no sense.

Unlike in the other realities, where the house had been, as Botan herself had put it "quite hideous, actually", the paradise version of the house was quite stunning and welcoming. The other version of the house that Hiei had seen had looked like a poor imitation of his tree-house, but this one looked like a vast improvement of his tree-house. It was the same overall size and only slightly different in shape, but the craftsmanship and fine details were of infinitely better quality. There was even a string of lanterns under the over-hang of the roof just like there was on Hiei's tree-house, but instead of being little glass boxes the size of his hand, the ones he was looking at now were bigger than his head and looked like the ornamental lanterns on display at those human parties Kurama had called "culture festivals". The walls, the roof and the legs of the house were made of a more attractive wood and the smaller details – like the doorframe and the shutters over the windows – had clearly been better thought out and built.

"Hey, Hiei, what you doing out there?"

Hiei ignored the voice calling out to him, still too lost in his own thoughts to pay it any attention.

"Hiei!"

Hiei growled, trying to stay focused on figuring out how the difference in the house had come about – after all, it must have resulted from a decision he had made, and what decision could he possibly have made to affect the appearance of a house that belonged to someone he did not even know in the human world?

"Hey, Hiei!"

He had always known that there was something amiss about the other realities he had visited, and now perhaps he had found that missing part of the puzzle. All this time Mukuro had let him think that he was to blame for the multiple disastrous places he had visited, but actually something else had also been at work making a mess of things, and this house was clear proof of that.

"Hey, Hiei, maybe you need to get yourself a third ear! Get over here!"

Hiei fixed his eyes onto Yusuke, who was standing halfway down the steps leading up to the front porch with Monzan sat on his shoulders. Hiei slowly started towards them – not because Yusuke had ordered him to, rather because he wanted to start finding answers, and in turn finding sources of blame for the norm reality.

"What kept you?" Yusuke asked him, smirking mockingly. "Not getting slow, are you Hiei?"

"My daddy's faster than you," Monzan said stubbornly.

"He used to be faster than me," Yusuke said with a sigh. "But he's been getting kinda slow lately…"

"Are you asking for a fight?" Hiei growled at him, stopping at the base of the steps.

Yusuke grinned and lifted Monzan off of his shoulders, placing him down on the porch.

"Well, if you insist…" he said, rolling up his sleeves.

Hiei was not especially in the mood to get into any sort of sparring session with Yusuke – as much as he usually enjoyed the challenge and the exercise, he was too distracted to focus on any fighting that did not involve killing his opponent – and so he was almost relieved when Botan came running out of the door and began making enough noise to put a spectator at a demon world tournament to shame.

"Monzan!" she wailed, dropping to her knees at his side. "Where have you been all day?"

"I already told you, idiot," Yusuke answered her. "He was in demon world with Hiei."

Botan looked back over her shoulder at Yusuke and glared at him in a way that actually made him look nervous. Hiei started to smile in amusement but stopped abruptly as Botan shifted her glare to him, the look on her face only darkening as she caught his eye.

"Hiei, that was very irresponsible of you," she said sternly. "You could have taken Monzan there at a weekend. You could have at least told me where you were going, I would have given him a change of clothes and I wouldn't have been left fearing the worst when his teacher called to say he was missing!"

"Yeah Hiei, you jerk," Yusuke muttered, sniggering into one hand.

"Shut-up, idiot," Hiei grumbled at him.

"Please don't do that again Hiei," Botan said, her face softening slightly. "I was so worried about both of you. I don't mind you taking Monzan to demon world – I've already told you that I think you should take him there more often, but you have to let me know when you're going there!"

"Looks like you're sleeping on the couch tonight, Hiei," Yusuke added.

"Shut-up, Yusuke!" Botan and Hiei both snapped at him.

He shrugged in mock innocence and started back inside. Botan began fussing over Monzan in a way that was almost too infuriating to watch, and Hiei thought about telling her as much, but he contained himself when she discovered the cuts on Monzan's hand where he had grabbed a sword by the blade.

"Have you been fighting?" she asked him.

He nodded and Hiei tensed: did she disapprove of their son doing what came naturally to him?

"Did you do well?" she asked.

"Aunty Mukuro underestimated me," he replied.

Botan smiled and Hiei was quietly relieved – and still a little amused that Monzan had adopted his manner of speech with regards to how he felt about how others perceived his strength. He watched Botan close her hands around Monzan's injuries, a faint golden glow shining out between her fingers. After a few seconds the glow faded and she opened her hands out again, revealing that she had healed away the damage.

"Try to be more careful next time," she said. "And maybe if you practise more, aunty Mukuro will give you a bigger challenge the next time you visit her."

She pulled him into a hug, which he returned, both of them smiling and reminding Hiei that they had that same smile that depicted a gentle heart and spirited nature. He felt something strange as he thought about how accepting Botan apparently was of Monzan fighting powerful demons on a quest to train his skills and become stronger and how she healed his wounds and loved him all the more for it.

Hiei supposed that was what his own mother should have done for him: he should have been training with strong demons in a monitored environment with lunchboxes of hand-prepared meals and coming home to a mother who healed his wounds and was gentle and loving with him. Thinking about that and what Mukuro had told him about how Botan had won her over with her little flower trick, Hiei could understand why that other Hiei had fought so hard to be with Botan, and why he had worried about her being hurt by bearing his child and yet still it had become something he had wanted.

"Go on inside, aunty Yukina is making dinner for you," Botan said as she released Monzan again.

He obediently went running inside, leaving Botan and Hiei alone together. Botan slowly stood up and Hiei climbed the steps to join her on the porch.

"I worry about him," she said as he joined her. "I thought he'd been kidnapped."

Hiei thought that he should probably say something to reassure her, but instead he just put his arms around her, smiling to himself when she returned his gesture.

"I'm glad you came here," she said, stroking one hand through his hair. "It's wonderful having more time with you. And this is the last time we can ever come here, so it's extra special."

Hiei started to frown slightly. He wanted to ask her what the house was and why they were there, but he supposed that other Hiei would already know the answers to those questions, and in his bid not to draw too much attention to himself as being out of place he said no more on the matter, instead taking Botan's hand and walking indoors with her. She led him to a large room with floor length windows where everyone else was gathered talking and laughing about various things at once. They all greeted Hiei with a smile – which was also ironic to him when he thought that in the norm reality they all either hated him or could not remember him.

"I made dinner for you too brother, follow me," Yukina called over to him.

Botan kept hold of his hand and so Hiei brought her with him, his hunger by then too great and the lure of Yukina's cooking too tempting to overcome. Monzan was, Hiei noticed with dry smirk, already sat at the dining table, and his eyes fixing onto Yukina when she entered the room and following her intently. Hiei sat down across from him and Botan sat at his side. Yukina placed down plates of food in front of each of them and then sat down opposite Botan and next to Monzan, patting him on the head affectionately.

"It's so sad that this is the last time we'll ever come here," Yukina said.

"I know, it's like closing a chapter of our lives," Botan agreed. "It must be harder for Kuwabara though."

"He doesn't seem to mind so much," Yukina said.

Hiei slowly stopped eating.

"Is it not good, Hiei?" Yukina asked him worriedly.

The food was fantastic, but it was not the reason he had stopped.

"How did you get here, Yukina?" he asked, lifting his eyes to his sister.

"I came with Kazuma and Botan, of course," she replied.

Hiei glanced at Botan before turning back to Yukina.

"On a bus?" he asked.

"No, silly!" Botan laughed. "Kuwabara drove us here in his car!"

Hiei started to feel that dark sense of foreboding creeping over him again. Kuwabara's strangely more comfortable lifestyle in this reality was one matter he had never quite resolved and he was still anxious to find out if it was because the idiot was exploiting innocent and naïve Yukina.

"The big, shiny white one?" Hiei asked Yukina.

"It is a big, shiny white car, yes," Yukina replied. "But it's not as fast as you! Mostly because of the speeding laws…"

"That's a very expensive car," Hiei said slowly.

"Not for a man like Kuwabara it's not," Botan said.

She had given her reply quite casually, but it had only made Hiei's anger spike. He fought to contain it, forcing himself to hold back until he could get the answers to his questions: but he suddenly found his efforts all the more difficult when Kuwabara himself entered the room.

"Hey, we're starting a game of poker, who's in?" he asked.

He stayed by the doorway, which Hiei felt was a sensible thing for him to have done, because if he had come closer, Hiei knew that he would have taken a shot at him.

"I'll play," Botan said. "But before you go Kuwabara, aren't you sad that his house is to be sold?"

"No," Kuwabara instantly replied.

"Not even a little bit?" Botan asked.

"No," he said again.

"Not even a tiny, teeny–"

"Why would he be sad about this house?" Hiei snapped irritably.

"Well it was his first major project," Botan replied, her expression and tone suggesting that her answer should have been obvious.

Hiei stared at her for a long time before accepting that he was no less confused.

"I don't think about it like that," Kuwabara said. "I always think that your house was my first major project. This house is just the first one I got paid for working on."

Hiei slowly turned to look at Kuwabara again.

"…What?" he muttered.

"Building your house was really, really hard work, Hiei," Kuwabara said, looking slightly nervous and down-trodden. "And you stood over me the whole time threatening to kill me, so I didn't really have much choice. I hear people say they shed blood, sweat and tears for their work, but I don't think they mean it literally. I literally did shed blood, sweat and tears making that tree-house."

"…You made the tree-house?"

"Oh Hiei, stop teasing him!" Botan laughed.

"I remember when you asked Kazuma to make the house, brother," Yukina said, smiling widely. "It was so funny!"

"I wasn't there when he asked," Botan said.

"He pushed me up against a wall and pointed his sword at my neck and said "you make houses, so make a house for Botan or die"," Kuwabara said.

"Oh that's so sweet!" Botan said.

"Sweet?" Kuwabara muttered. "It was mean and scary…"

"But Kazuma, it's only because you built that house that you became so successful," Yukina pointed out.

"Successful?" Hiei echoed. "This idiot? Hn, the only thing I remember him doing successfully was when he freed us from the other dimension Itsuki caught us in."

"What about when I defeated that shoulder monkey Toguro brother?" Kuwabara argued.

"You may have won the fight, but you didn't finish the job," Hiei reminded him. "And that "shoulder monkey" came back and ended up allying himself with Sensui and causing us even more trouble!"

"…You never change, Hiei."

"Neither do you! Apart from here."

Kuwabara gave Hiei a questioning look and Hiei quickly returned to his meal, ignoring his little misspoken remark.

"Be fair, Kuwabara," Botan said. "You only built the tree-house because of Hiei, and if you hadn't built that house, you never would have been commissioned to build this house."

Hiei spat some of his drink back into the cup, choking on the rest as it inadvertently slipped down his windpipe.

"You built this house?" he asked in a strained voice, looking over at Kuwabara.

"Well, yeah," Kuwabara replied, again giving Hiei one of those looks that told him that other Hiei already knew what he had just asked about.

"But this is a superior house," Hiei said, unable to stop himself.

"…Why do you always do that to me?" Kuwabara responded. "You say something that sounds like a compliment but it also sounds really insulting! Like you think I couldn't have designed this house?"

"Kazuma was asked to build this house, remember?" Yukina said to Hiei. "After he built your tree-house, lots of people came to see how beautiful it was, and Kazuma was commissioned to build this house because of it."

"And now he's the architect of the stars, Hiei," Botan added. "Kuwabara and Yukina have travelled all over the world designing houses for celebrities."

"…What?" Hiei muttered.

"I guess this house really helped me establish myself," Kuwabara said. "And the funniest thing is, I got paid so much money for designing this house and got so many other offers of work, I dropped out of college without even finishing my degree!"

The others laughed but Hiei remained silent and stern.

"It was so lucky, because I've never needed to work," Botan said.

"And we can afford to hire professional gardeners and workers to maintain Master Genkai's temple and shrine," Yukina added.

Hiei felt something click into place: Yukina's last statement explained why the old lady's temple and its grounds looked so much better in this reality.

"…You're wealthy…" he said slowly.

"I'm not as wealthy as the guy who owns this place," Kuwabara replied. "But I do lot better than most guys in my position."

"And all because of you, brother!" Yukina said.

She was smiling and Hiei supposed that she had meant well, but her words only made him feel worse.

"You were Kazuma'a muse!" she added, making him feel infinitely worse.

"Yeah, I guess you were, Hiei," Kuwabara reluctantly agreed. "Do you remember that day you took me out to the woods and said "build the house right here"?"

"And he told you it was impossible because of all the trees and the roots in the ground," Yukina added.

"And then you climbed up that one gnarly old tree and started sulking, and when I saw you up there, the way you leaned back into the corner of the branch, you looked just like an inverted A-beam strut: and that was when I realised that I could pre-fabricate the panels and build an elevated house into the trees themselves."

Hiei resisted the urge to smack his head repeatedly against a wall, instead trying to stay focused on piecing together what he had just learned.

"You became wealthy building this house?" he asked slowly.

"Pretty much," Kuwabara replied.

"And you were only able to build this house because you built the tree-house?" Hiei asked.

"Yeah," Kuwabara answered. "I was commissioned to build something like your house, and that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't built the tree-house in the first place. I mean, I wasn't even a qualified architect, I was still in college."

"And you built the tree-house because I asked you to?"

"Yeah. You wanted a house for Botan to live in while she was in her human body and you wanted it to be where it is because that's Botan's favourite place in the world."

"…And, just for shits and giggles, what if you'd never built that tree-house? What if you'd never been commissioned to build this house that made you so wealthy?"

"If I'd never built the tree-house or this one? Well… I guess I would have finished college, graduated and I'd probably still be working as an apprentice for an architectural firm someplace, making a really measly salary."

This, Hiei realised, was another, extreme, example of that snowball effect that Mukuro had warned him about: and apparently it was all the more significant here in the paradise reality, hence why no other reality had compared to it.

"Oh goodness, can you imagine that?" Botan gasped.

"We wouldn't have been able to travel around the world," Yukina said to Kuwabara.

"Who would have paid for the upkeep of the temple?" Botan asked.

"Who would have done the upkeep?" Yukina asked. "All that work!"

"I would have still been working full-time, and I wouldn't be at home for Monzan," Botan said.

"How terrible! Aren't you glad Hiei was your inspiration to rise to greatness, Kazuma?"

Kuwabara gave her a sceptical look before turning his attention to Hiei.

"I guess it's kinda true," he begrudgingly admitted. "Like you wouldn't be able to live with your family the way you do now if it wasn't for me, and I wouldn't be able to live so comfortably or be with Yukina it hadn't been for you inspiring me and giving me your approval."

"It's like your fates were tied together!" Yukina gasped, clapping her hands. "And now we're all together as a family and it's wonderful!"

"…Our fates are tied together…?" Kuwabara muttered. "Hey Hiei, what do you think about that?"

"I think that's the biggest fucking snowball I've ever seen," Hiei replied.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei spends the weekend at the house on legs and learns more about the differences in Yukina, Botan and the others, and is still slightly surprised at just how close everyone still is despite the passage of time, and he continues to prolong his stay there through sleep depravation and self-mutilation. **Chapter 25 – Among the Lucky Few**

 **A/N:** I alluded to this Kuwabara thing more times than I can even remember, but the first most blatant hint was in the first part of chapter 15 and again in the first two parts of chapter 18.

And for the really, really observant, chapter 15 plus this chapter can be interpreted to predict where part 4 of this story goes.


	25. Among the Lucky Few

**Recap:** Hiei discovered that Monzan likes Koto (which is actually strangely significant later on in the story), and he travelled with Monzan to "the lodge" to join the others for a weekend break. When he got there he realised it was the wooden house on legs he had encountered in other realities, but it looked different because in paradise it was designed by Kuwabara, who got the job after building Hiei's tree-house – which is why he is now rich. Yukina commented that Kuwabara and Hiei's fates were tied together (also significant!)

* * *

 **Chapter 25: Among the Lucky Few**

Hiei sat outside alone for a long time, well into the night, looking at the house on legs. He was still overwhelmed by it – because of the differences in realities that it represented and because it truly was quite spectacular, and it was difficult to fathom that something so great could have come from a porcine lummox like Kuwabara.

And yet it had, and that meant that what Yukina had said was, in a very disturbing way, true: Hiei's fate was linked to Kuwabara's. In the norm reality, where they were long distanced from each other, they were both miserable and in the paradise reality, where they lived as neighbours, they were both perfectly happy, with every other reality putting them somewhere in between those two extremes.

Hiei tried to make himself feel better by telling himself that this proved that Shuichi's theories were wrong. Shuichi had said that Kuwabara was the least affected by Hiei's decisions, when in fact he had been the most affected. And Shuichi's idea that the norm reality could have been fixed seemed now even more ludicrous, since the norm Kuwabara could not even remember Hiei and Botan and, since the house on legs had already been built, he was too late to become the famous "architect of the stars" that he was now in the paradise reality.

Hiei was unsure if knowing what he now did about Kuwabara and, frankly, how indebted he was to him, tainted paradise or not. He supposed that Kuwabara did not feel that Hiei owed him anything since he had been the reason behind his creation of the tree-house and had given his approval to Yukina, both of which had led Kuwabara to the comfortable life he now led: but in Hiei's eyes the balance of debt was still tipped heavily in Kuwabara's favour, as he had both provided Hiei with a home to live in and continued to financially support Botan and Monzan to allow them to enjoy a comfortable life in the living world. Hiei had to wonder at the mentality of that other Hiei to have accepted such charity from a human – especially from Kuwabara, a human that Hiei had always despised as a representation of everything that was wrong with the human race. That other Hiei had, until the incident with the rock monster, been the same person as Hiei himself and so he tried to figure out how he could ever have come to be someone that relied so heavily on Kuwabara and thought enough of him to grant Yukina permission to be his lover. He could only think that the change of heart had been gradual and circumstantial: he could understand ordering Kuwabara to build the tree-house, and that making Kuwabara wealthy and successful had been a mere accidental side-effect of Hiei's demand. After that, that other Hiei had apparently spent most of his time in demon world and he had probably never really considered that providing Botan with a house was not enough to sustain her in the living world and that Kuwabara was supporting her financially.

It was understandable and even justifiable, but it would never be totally acceptable in Hiei's mind. Being so indebted to Kuwabara, having had to rely on him so heavily to bring about paradise was a very high cost to have paid, a huge gamble to have taken and Hiei was sure that it was only by luck that the end result had been so prosperous for all concerned. That other Hiei was apparently just a lucky bastard, unlike Hiei.

Hiei was so lost in his own ponderings and inner-conflict that he was almost surprised by someone sitting down next to him to look back at the house.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Hiei turned to Yukina, who was looking towards the house. He was unsure if she was referring to the countryside around them, the house itself or what was inside the house – all of those were beautiful things, and all of them surprising to Hiei.

"Yes," he eventually answered, turning his head back towards the house. "It's hard to imagine that it was born from the mind of something so ugly."

"Hiei, don't talk like that!" Yukina wailed. "Kazuma isn't ugly!"

Hiei was tempted to ask his sister if growing up in the haze of the freezing fog in the ice village had permanently impaired her eyesight, but he contained his sarcasm in case it upset her.

"He's a beautiful man with a beautiful heart and soul, and his work is beautiful because it's a reflection of everything that he is," she added.

Hiei clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, finding it nearly impossible not to correct her.

"And he makes me very happy," Yukina said.

That was a good thing, Hiei reasoned. And his sister certainly was substantially happier with Kuwabara in the paradise reality than she was anywhere else, especially in the norm reality where she had been taken from him and he could not even remember who she was or what she had ever meant to him.

"He's kind and noble and polite," she continued. "He's maybe a little old-fashioned in his morals, but I like that, because I'm a little bit old-fashioned myself. He treats me like a lady and I'm happy to take care of him and support him."

"He always did fawn over you," Hiei said.

"His attentions were sometimes a little overwhelming," Yukina admitted. "But his love is true, pure and loyal, and that's the most beautiful thing in all three worlds."

"…Yes…"

"And everyday I feel thankful that I have such a loving and honourable family around me: Kazuma, you brother, Botan and little Monzan."

"It's a better life than living in the ice village."

Hiei wondered if he had said something amiss when Yukina did not respond. She had, in the past, expressed that she resented the oppressive way of the life in the ice village and in the norm reality she was as miserable as she could be living there again: but as he stole a glance at her from the corner of his eye, Hiei saw her looking suddenly sad and slightly remorseful, which made no sense whatsoever.

"I think about the ice village sometimes," she said quietly. "I had friends there, not all the women there were as cold and cruel as the elders who enforced their rules and ways of life on the rest of us. Our mother and her friend Miss Rui wanted something better for the ice village. They understood the need for separation from the rest of demon world, but they wanted more freedom to leave the village if they wanted to and even if they never did leave the village, they wanted to live with love in their hearts. But those elders never let them have that freedom. I hate those elders. Sometimes I wish I had told them that before I left. I wish I had told them how wrong they were and let the others know that it was okay to love and to want something better, to stand up and defend your own beliefs… But I guess I wasn't strong enough for that. Sometimes I feel as though I failed all my friends there though. I found a happier life for myself, but they probably never will."

"Hn, you shouldn't hold onto regret like that," Hiei told her. "You know that your life only improved because you defied those elders, anyone else up there who feels unhappy needs to find the strength to follow in your footsteps. If they can't do it for themselves, they don't deserve to reap the rewards."

"But maybe they don't even know that they're capable of making a better life for themselves," Yukina said. "They've never known any other way and so they don't expect to find love or happiness. Maybe they just need someone to help show them a better way. I didn't really understand, it was only with the help and support of others like our mother, Miss Rui, Kazuma, Yusuke, Botan, Keiko and Shizuru that I learned that love and happiness were such wonderful things, things worth fighting for."

"…Worth dying for…"

"Exactly."

Hiei paused to consider the exchange that had just passed between himself and Yukina: by his own logic, the Yukina in the norm reality was to blame for her own unhappiness and needed to save herself from the ice village, not wait for someone else to do it for her. But by Yukina's logic, it was only through the support of friends and those caring enough to show love that anyone would ever find happiness. And by Yukina's logic, Hiei thought dryly, his own life in the norm reality had become meaningless because he had closed himself off to his friends, and by his own logic he was completely at fault for everything bad about his own existence in his own reality and he did not deserve to reap the benefits of living that other Hiei's life because he had not had the strength to do the frankly numerous and incredible things that other Hiei had to in order to reach paradise.

"I think I'm lucky to have the things that I do and to live the way that I do now," Yukina said, breaking the silence that had formed between them. "But I suppose I shouldn't say that to you brother, since you don't believe in luck."

Hiei perked up slightly at her words. He, of course, did not believe in luck nor had he ever thought of himself as a lucky man, but he had thought that other Hiei was lucky, and yet, according to Yukina, that other Hiei did not believe in luck either.

"You always tell me that luck comes to those who make it for themselves," she continued. "And I think you're right. It seems lucky that we have such wonderful friends, family and homes now, but that only came to be because we made it that way ourselves, right?"

Hiei wondered if, on any level at all, Yukina knew what a profound affect her words were having on him. He had been trying to forget about the norm reality and all the bad decisions he had made there and the bad luck he had endured, but it was getting harder not to think that maybe he should not have been so arrogant to blindly make snap, selfish decisions and then claim to live without regret and without mistakes when clearly he had made plenty of mistakes and regretted them all.

Hiei hated feeling stupid.

"Let's go back inside," Yukina said, standing up. "It's getting late, and I noticed Botan looked really tired – I think she wore herself out fretting over you and Monzan going missing today – and she is pregnant, she should be relaxing."

Hiei nodded numbly and got to his feet at Yukina's side. Together they started back towards the house, the only sounds around them being their footsteps and the faint and infrequent tinkling sound of the glass lanterns swaying in the light wind and occasionally tapping against the walls. The atmosphere was quite homely and calming, but Hiei did not think that it was quite so striking as the atmosphere around his tree-house home, which had a much more relaxing effect on him: there he had felt at home surprisingly quickly, and that sense that he belonged there had never lessened any. Clearly the feeling he had about his home in the living world (a place he had always despised) was an indication that he belonged in paradise and returning there had been the right and best thing for him to do.

As they neared the house again Hiei started to feel tired himself. He had not slept much in the days leading up to Mukuro's return from setting up her trap in his own reality and he had barely slept at all since arriving in paradise. He made a mental note to find some coffee and sugar when he got inside and also to check on his wound. He thought that it would probably not fully heal for at least another day even if he left it as it was, but he did not want to take any chances – just like that other Hiei, he did not rely on luck to get anything out of life, rather he would get the results he wanted by making them happen himself.

Back inside the house he found things quieter and more sedate than they had been earlier. Yusuke, Kurama, Kuwabara and his sister were sitting quietly around a table playing what looked like a slightly too serious game of cards, Maya was doing something to Keiko's hair in a corner of the room and both of them were in their pyjamas and Botan was laid on a couch by the far wall, fast asleep with Monzan squashed between her belly and the back of the sofa, also asleep and looking quite comfortable and contented despite his awkward position.

"Isn't that so cute?" Yukina whispered to Hiei, pointing over at Botan and Monzan.

Hiei smiled in spite of himself, feeling that strange sense of peace when he looked at his wife and son asleep.

"I'll put Monzan to bed," Yukina offered. "You take Botan."

Hiei nodded and together they approached the couch and began carefully prying the two apart.

"Oh my, Monzan is getting so big!" Yukina whispered as she finally managed to gather him into her arms.

He flopped against her, his arms hanging over each of her shoulders and his head nuzzling against her shoulder but he did not stir from his slumber. He looked strangely bigger and heavier in Yukina's arms, but Hiei supposed that was just because Yukina was so petite herself.

"I'll show you to your room," she said to him as he eased Botan from the couch, trying to avoid lifting her too suddenly and waking her.

He followed Yukina from the room again, finding himself strangely not disgusted as he noticed that Monzan was dribbling slightly into Yukina's hair. Botan was clearly just as deeply asleep in his arms as her body was quite limp, but even in that state Hiei could see a difference in her face and demeanour from the Botan of the norm reality, her generally happier and more contented life still somehow obvious. Hiei also found something quite comforting about knowing that her improved life was because of him, but equally he felt a little envious of that other Hiei for having been the one to have initiated it all.

And for the first time ever, Hiei seriously wondered what that other Hiei had felt and experienced during those two weeks in the cave after he had saved Botan's life, and how that had grown and progressed to what it was now.

"You're in here," Yukina said softly, walking into a moderately large bedroom with a double bed and the bag Hiei had carried there already deposited there by someone.

Hiei nodded and started towards the bed.

"I'll put Monzan in the nursery," Yukina said. "Though I think he might have outgrown the cot in there by now."

Hiei stopped and looked back over his shoulder at her.

"Take him over here," he said.

Yukina gave him a funny look but he turned away from her to avoid seeing it and considering what it probably meant.

"Put him in the bed with Botan," he said, pulling back the bed-sheets.

"…H-Hiei?" Yukina asked, sounding as confused and surprised as she had looked.

"I don't want him put away in a…"

Hiei placed Botan down, pausing there with his arms still around her as he considered what he had been about to say. It had been a genuine expression of how he felt, but he had to wonder when he had started feeling that way and why he felt it so strongly.

"Just put him here," he said, carefully sliding his arms out from under Botan.

Yukina came over to his side, and from the corner of his eye he could see her still staring at him with that look of confused disbelief as though she was sure that she had misheard him or else he had gone mad.

"I'm not really tired," he lied. "So Monzan might as well sleep here tonight, since I probably won't."

"Oh… Okay…"

Yukina laid Monzan down beside Botan and she arranged the sheets over them both, smiling as she finished her task.

"They look so peaceful," she whispered.

"That's how they're meant to be," Hiei replied without thinking.

Yukina nodded and together they left the room again, Hiei hesitated at the door, looking back as he saw movement, momentarily worried that he had inadvertently awoken one or both of them. He saw Botan wind an arm around Monzan and cuddle him close to her chest, but neither stirred from their sleep and so he turned out the light and closed the door, letting them rest. He needed to stay awake that night, but he planned to sneak back into the room before Botan or Monzan woke and to pretend that he had been there with them all night.

"That was a very nice thing that you did, brother," Yukina said to him as they returned to the living room. "It's such a big house, Monzan used to cry a lot when he was in the nursery all on his own."

Hiei supposed that Yukina had meant to make him feel better with her words but instead he felt worse: though it was not really his fault that Monzan had been left to cry alone, rather it was the fault of that other Hiei. He may have made a lot of good decisions and done a lot of good and noble things, but Hiei was starting to see that not every decision that other Hiei had made or thing that he had done had been for the best. There was perhaps room for improvement even in paradise.

"Hiei, will you join us?" Kurama asked him as he passed the table. "We were just about to start a new game."

"Hiei doesn't play games, remember?" Kuwabara said.

"Maybe he'll change his mind this once," Yusuke said.

Hiei stiffened.

"What do you say, Hiei?" Yusuke asked him. "Do you want to play a game just this once?"

"No!" Hiei snapped, more forcefully than he had meant to.

"…It's just a game, Hiei," Kuwabara muttered.

"No, it starts as just a game, but then it turns into something horrible and irreversible, you idiot!" Hiei growled.

"You don't need to be so uptight Hiei," Kurama said smoothly. "Sit down and join us."

"Do you know what happens the day I decide to "play"?" Hiei asked.

"…You lighten up a bit?" Kuwabara suggested.

"No, I end up acting like a human and living with Keiko and she turns into a slut and Botan turns into Yusuke's mindless slave!"

The room fell silent and the others all looked around each other questioningly. Hiei started to realise what he had said, started to think that maybe mentioning his experiences of another reality had been a bad decision, but before he could give it any serious consideration, Yukina spoke up and covered his mistake.

"Oh, that's right!" she said, smiling brightly. "Hiei was playing a game in the kitchen earlier!"

"…I was?" Hiei echoed, quirking an eyebrow at her.

"Yes, do you remember Kazuma?" she responded, walking over to stand by Kuwabara. "We were playing the "what if" game."

"I love that game!" Keiko called over.

"Me too!" Maya added.

"…Right…" Yusuke said slowly, his eyes moving to Hiei. "So why does you playing a game of cards with us end up with you living with Keiko?"

Hiei hesitated, unsure how to talk his way out of the mess he still seemed to be in, but again he was saved the bother by Yukina.

"But that's the way the game works, Yusuke," she said earnestly. "You pretend that something unlikely happened and then you imagine what the consequences would be."

"You mean like what if I'd never been revived after I was hit by that car?" Yusuke asked.

"That's a depressing one," Keiko complained. "Pick something nice."

"How about what if I'd been spirit detective instead of Yusuke?" Kuwabara's sister suggested.

"Never would have happened," Kuwabara instantly responded.

"Oh no?" she asked, her smile vanishing. "I didn't see spirit world offering the job to you, either!"

"I guess the game is about picking unlikely things," Kuwabara said with a shrug.

"What if the Fruit of Previous Life had permanently transformed me into Youko?" Kurama suggested.

"Yeah, that's more like it!" Keiko said. "Or what if Yusuke had finished high school?"

"Hey!" Yusuke protested.

Hiei was relieved that his blunder had not caused undue suspicion, but he was starting to think that maybe being forced to explain himself would have been easier than listening to everyone else pass his concerns off as a game.

"Hiei's good at this game," Kuwabara said suddenly. "He can really imagine stuff going bad."

"That's because he a pessimist," Yusuke replied. "Here, watch this: Hiei, what if you'd never married Botan?"

Hiei tensed, wanting to stop himself but somehow not able to.

"She would have become fat and bitter and Kuwabara would have a stupid beard and live in a horrible part of the city," he blurted out.

"See?" Yusuke said. "I didn't even ask him about Kuwabara, he just threw that one in for free."

"He just likes insulting me any chance he gets…" Kuwabara grumbled.

"That is interesting," Kurama said, turning in his chair and fixing Hiei with a look that immediately made him feel uncomfortable. "But I have a question I think Hiei could answer more succinctly: Hiei, what if you had never saved Botan from that rock beast?"

Hiei felt something inside of him grow cold. The intensity in Kurama's eyes was almost debilitating to look at, and he could only conclude that, despite his hopes that he would be able to conceal his true identity for some time yet, Kurama had already figured out that he was the wrong Hiei, back again by the same methods as before.

"That's a terrible question, Kurama," Yukina said quietly, looking as though she actually might cry. "Why would you ask that? Hiei would never have left Botan to die like that. That would have been a cruel and vicious thing to do to someone so kind, selfless and defenceless as Botan. My brother would never even think of doing something so dishonourable and cold."

"Perhaps not," Kurama said, his eyes still fixed unblinkingly on Hiei's. "But don't we all have moments of indecision and hesitation where fate could lead us down two completely different paths?"

"It's just a game, Kurama," Kuwabara pointed out. "You're taking it more seriously than Hiei is."

"Yeah, but still, let's hear Hiei's depressive answer," Yusuke said. "Come on Hiei, what if you'd never gone back for Botan? What then?"

"Yusuke, stop it," Keiko said. "It's not nice."

Yusuke shrugged.

"I thought it was a stupid game anyway," he said. "So are you joining us for the next round or not Hiei?"

Hiei looked down at the table and then at Kurama, who was still glaring at him with no less intensity.

"Where's the coffee?" he asked, turning to Yukina.

"In the kitchen," she replied. "Would you like me to make you some?"

Hiei nodded and followed her through to the kitchen, feeling slightly relieved when the other started talking again behind him. He told himself that such questions should not have bothered him because they no longer mattered now and they were nothing more than the game the others – apart from Kurama – thought that they were.

But for some reason he found it quite hard to forget about the norm reality and all the bad things he had seen in the other realities he had visited that had not been paradise.

* * *

Staying awake the first night at the house on legs proved easier than Hiei had thought it might. The others, most especially Yusuke, Kurama, Kuwabara and his sister, had stayed up most of the night anyway and Hiei had been able to disguise his deliberate insomnia as him merely joining in on their activities – not that he did actually join in on their activities, rather he sat outside of the floor-length windows and alternated between enjoying the silence and secretly marvelling at the house that had apparently been born from the brain of Kuwabara. Once the house had grown quiet and everyone else had eventually gone to bed Hiei checked on his wound, ripping the edges slightly to endure it stayed open and then redressed it in the same bandages – again making a mental note to find clean and fresh bandages soon or else take more from his room in Mukuro's fortress in demon world. He then crept back into the house and through to the room he had deposited Botan in several hours before, easing himself into one side of the bed and pretending to sleep until daybreak.

It was only when Hiei heard noises on either side of his head that he realised he had somehow actually fallen asleep. Shafts of golden sunlight were splayed across the floor and bed from gaps in the curtains and Hiei realised that he must have been asleep for at least two hours. He could still feel his wound and so he felt reasonably secure that it was not close to healing, but he was unable to check for sure because Botan was lying on top of his right arm and cuddled into his shoulder, pinning that arm down, and Monzan had somehow crossed the bed and both Botan and Hiei and wound himself up in Hiei's left arm, pitting that arm down too.

Hiei sighed. It was a little frustrating to be stuck where he was and even a little uncomfortable, but equally it was quite calming and relieving to be lying in such a safe and peaceful place. He could hear movement in various other parts of the house, presumably as the others got up for the day, and after a few minutes the smell of food cooking started to reach him.

And Hiei almost jumped out of his skin when Monzan rose up onto his knees, his eyes barely open and his nose sniffing at the air. Hiei gave the boy a withering look, but he did not notice as he was too busy rubbing at his eyes. Hiei then held in a groan of pain as Monzan clumsily crawled over his wounded abdomen and Botan's legs, dropping to the ground at the other side of the bed and hurrying to the door. He fumbled about for a bit before managing to slide it open far enough to slip out, not wasting time closing it behind him, instead scurrying away in the direction of the kitchen, where Hiei heard Yukina greeting him and offering him food.

Hiei groaned in despair, the noise making Botan moan and start to awaken. He had not intended to wake her, but seeing the way she smiled and her eyes changed when they focused on him he was glad that he had woken her up.

"Well good morning," she said huskily, reaching one hand up to his face and stroking her fingers down his cheek. "This is a nice surprise. It's so nice to wake up and find you here… Lying next to me… In bed…"

Hiei smiled himself then as she hooked a leg over his hips and pressed herself against his side. She started to kiss him on the cheek but stopped abruptly as Yusuke walked past the door, calling out a greeting to them both as he went. She looked back over her shoulder at the partially open door for a long time before slowly turning to look at Hiei again.

"I don't remember going to bed last night," she said slowly. "And – oh dear! I don't remember putting Monzan to bed, either!"

"He's fine," Hiei assured her. "He just went for breakfast and he left the door open on his way out."

Botan pulled a face at him.

"He slept in here with us last night," Hiei said, omitting to add that he himself had not been there for most of the night

"…He slept with us?" she asked. "I mean I sometimes let him sleep with me, but I never thought that you would… Did he sneak in here during the night?"

"No, I had Yukina take him here after he fell asleep on the couch with you," Hiei replied.

"You did?" Botan asked. "But… That's so… Sweet…"

"Hn."

"Oh, Hiei!"

Hiei grunted as Botan grabbed an arm around his middle and squeezed him. He knew that she had not meant to and was not trying to, but her actions had and did hurt. He contained himself as best he could, trying to enjoy her embrace, but struggling to feel the pleasure over the pain.

"We should get dressed," she said, lifting her head and slackening her hold. "…Oh, I'm still dressed from last night, I fell asleep in my clothes… And so did you… Well we should go and get breakfast with the others."

Botan started to move and Hiei tried to grab at her to stop her. Between wrapping her leg around him, pushing herself against him and just by touching him she had started stirring a need for more within him, a need he had intended to satisfy there and then: but she managed to slip from the bed before he could catch her. He sat up and watched her move towards the door, where she stuck her head out into the hallway, looking in both directions before sliding the door shut and turning around again.

"I'm going for a shower first," she said, her tone changed.

"Hn," Hiei responded, turning his head from her.

He had hoped that he was going to get what he wanted when she had closed the door and remained in the room, but apparently not, he thought angrily.

"Aren't you coming with me, Hiei?"

Hiei turned back in time to see Botan move into a secondary doorway off of the bedroom, her back to him, and she was discarding her bra. He paused, so taken aback that he was unsure what to do: but as she slowly bent over and began pulling down her panties affording him a quite explicit view of exactly what he had been after he flung aside the bed-sheets and scrambled off the bed, hurriedly pulling off his clothes as he followed her into the little bathroom. As he fought with his pants she closed and locked the door behind him before slowly walking over to the shower cubicle and stepping inside. Hiei cursed several times as he kicked off the remainder of his clothes and staggered over to the screen Botan was obscured behind, the sight of her standing under the falling water and smiling at him seductively proving to be more than he could handle. With a growl of appreciation and desire he pounced at her, pushing her against the tiled wall and burying his face into her shoulder.

Sliding his hands over her skin was an even more enjoyable experience when it was wet, as was feeling her delicate fingers trailing over his shoulders and down his back. She paused – but only momentarily – when her hands reached the bandages around his middle, but Hiei barely noticed. He was finding himself increasingly attracted to Botan, and he was unsure if it was because he knew that she could satisfy his needs in a way that no-one else ever had before, if it was because of the things he had learned about her from Mukuro or if it was a combination of the two. He pushed his fingers into her skin, pulling downwards and nipping at her shoulder. He started to curl his arms around her thighs and was a little surprised when she seemed to predict his actions and jumped into his hold, wrapping her legs around his waist. She seemed to instinctively understand his intentions and his needs, but he supposed that was because she had been married to that other Hiei for eight years, and she freely admitted to them having a quite active and full sex life.

Hiei reaffirmed his hold of Botan and she put her arms around his shoulders to hold herself up as he eased into her, his being overtaken by a strange combination of calm at being in a position he sought and urgency to find his release within her. He leaned forwards to let her rest her back against the tiles and he began grinding his hips against her, at first simply enjoying the feeling and the sound of her whimpering moans – that she presumably felt safe to make with the sound of the running water obscuring her voice from carrying beyond the cubicle – but as he pushed harder and deeper into her she cried out and suddenly squeezed his sides between her thighs. Ordinarily it would have been a pleasant enough experience and Hiei would simply have taken it as his cue to pick up the pace, but instead he stopped altogether and tried to focus on breathing and keeping his balance as the wound on his abdomen began throbbing, and he realised that the damp warmth he felt there was not from the shower or Botan, but rather from the blood that had started to soak into his dressing.

"Hiei?" Botan said, stroking a hand over his hair. "Sweetie, are you okay?"

Hiei tried to answer her but found that he could not, for risk of yelling out in pain.

"Hiei?" she said, taking his face in her hands. "What is it?"

He groaned quietly, and Botan seemed to notice what was happening as she started to become distraught and somehow managed to slide off of him and set herself onto her feet again.

"Oh goodness, this wound looks worse!" she gasped.

Hiei, who had closed his eyes as she arranged herself on the ground again, opened his eyes and looked down, mildly horrified to see that Botan had somehow managed to pull loose his bandages, exposing the damage underneath to her view.

"You have to let me heal this Hiei, it isn't getting any better!" she said, looking up at him with a look of such hurt concern it almost made him forget about the pain he was in.

He shook his head.

"I just need time," he said.

He was not even sure himself what he had meant by that remark: time for what? The wound was never going to heal as long as he was in paradise because he would never let it heal, and no amount of time was going to change that. In his eagerness to return to paradise, he had only ever thought of the permanent injury as something he would have to deal with himself: he had never once considered how he would explain it to anyone else there, least of all Botan, who was, understandably, confused by its persistence.

"Just give me time," he said. "I just need time and I'll get better."

Botan tilted her head slightly as though confused by his words and Hiei could understand why, as he was a little confused by them himself: but between the pain he was suffering and his still lingering desire to finish what he had started with Botan, his brain was no longer functioning logically – if it was even functioning at all – to process the thought.

"Maybe you need to keep it dry," she suggested.

"No," he said, catching her wrist as she reached for the control valve on the shower. "Let's just…Stay here for a little while."

She eyed him over and Hiei thought she intended to argue the point but she ended with a nod.

"I'll be gentle," she said. "I'll wash around it."

Hiei nodded and let her lather up his hair and body with more of that stuff that smelled like she did. He did not especially want to smell so flowery, but it was quite nice to smell her on himself, and it was especially nice to have her hands messaging every part of his body and so he let it happen before watching with a smirk as she soaped herself up. As she rinsed herself under the shower he saw her eyes fall below his wound, and he looked down at himself to see why – though he did then promptly wonder why he had bothered, since his eyes only confirmed what he could already feel: he was still sporting a very prominent and almost painful erection.

"Really Hiei?" Botan asked, lifting her eyes to his with an almost admonishing look.

He felt slightly ashamed of himself then for being unable to control his urges, but the moment was brief as he saw a sly smile slowly spread over his wife's face.

"I never run out of good ideas, and I think I have another one right now," she said, placing her hands on his shoulders.

Hiei let her gently turn him around and push his back against the wall, his interest in what she was doing only heightening his arousal. She turned her back to him and grabbed at the top of the shower door, and for a moment he thought that she was about to leave the shower cubicle altogether: but as she stretched up on her toes and looked back over her shoulder at him he finally understood her intentions and he gladly grabbed her hips and guided them back, thrusting himself into her fully. She groaned out a sigh and her grip of the doorframe faltered, her hands sliding down the glass. Hiei grinned as he realised that, with her bent over in front of him and in their current position, he could have his way with her with only a minimal amount of pain in his wound. In fact, he thought, his grin widening, the pain was becoming negligible as he began pumping into her harder and faster, his confidence growing.

Botan began moaning and crying out his name – which was a delight to listen to – and she bent over further, her arms pressed against the glass door of the cubicle. Hiei was not really sure if she had intended it to or not, but her altered angle allowed him closer access to her and let him push in deeper. He could feel her reaching her own release and he put one arm around her to hold her in place and reached his other hand around between her legs, massaging her tender flesh with his fingers. Her cries became incoherent and ragged as she climaxed, her body shaking from the strain as Hiei continued driving into her without breaking the pace or intensity of his thrusts. Her weight began to pull on his arm as her legs failed to support her and he gave a last, few, several sharp jerks of his hips before groaning out as he finally came himself.

Hiei held on for a few seconds, leaving himself sheathed within Botan as both their bodies twitched and shivered from the after-effects of their love-making, before he slowly eased back, letting himself slide out of her. He had to straighten her up and turn her around with his hands as she seemed to have lost all control of her body, and she simply fell against himself, barely managing to throw her arms loosely around his neck as he braced his arms around her waist to support her. They stood holding each other for some time, both breathing heavily and neither saying or doing anything. After several minutes like that Hiei start to notice that he could feel Botan's legs trembling against his own, and her knees were still bent at different angles, most of her weight slouched against his hold.

"Your legs are shaking," he told her.

"Oh Hiei," she gasped into his ear. "That's just what you do to me… Every single time…"

Hiei smirked smugly to himself and held her tighter, remembering then that she had said something similar the last time he had been in paradise about how every time they made love it felt as good as the first time. Apparently that was true for her, and Hiei was looking forward to finding out if it was true for himself too: and for such a delicious reward, he was more than willing to work out an excuse for his unending wound.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei finds yet more reasons to enjoy living in paradise, including learning more about why that other Hiei loves Botan so much and the camaraderie of having his friends and family around him all the time. And he learns a little more about Botan's defiance of spirit world, including why she was brave enough to take that challenge. **Chapter 26 – One Defining Moment**

 **A/N:** I'm still explaining the love Botan feels for Hiei and getting to the point where he actually realises he is in love with her and not just the paradise lifestyle – way more Disney-esque fluff to come (and more smut). Probably needless to say though, I'm not done with the angst yet. This is angst/romance, angst first because that's what it mostly is, I promise!


	26. One Defining Moment

**Recap:** Hiei had an enlightening conversation with Yukina (plot!), he got sucked into playing the "what if" game and was almost caught out when Kurama made it clear that he knows Hiei is the wrong Hiei (plot!), and then there was a whole bunch of fluff and smut (not plot…)

* * *

 **Chapter 26: One Defining Moment**

Hiei stood in front of a wide mirror, wrapped up in a fluffy white towel, watching Botan's reflection as she wrapped her hair up in a towel and collected another, smaller towel and started towards him with it.

"I'm so glad that you're here this weekend," she said sweetly.

"Well, I was–"

Hiei stopped abruptly as Botan dropped the towel she had been carrying over his head and began rubbing at his hair with it. He growled and tensed but she seemed not to care, finishing her task and whipping the towel off again. He glared at her reflection but she kept her eyes on his head as she began combing her fingers through his still damp hair.

"That was unnecessary," he said in a low voice.

"I know, but I like looking after you," she replied.

She kissed him softly on the cheek and his counter-argument faded from his mind before ever making it to his lips.

"I hope Monzan is behaving himself," she commented casually.

"Hn, he's probably too busy eating to cause any trouble," Hiei replied.

"That's the problem," Botan said slowly. "Yukina baked a lot of sweet things to take with us this weekend, and if Monzan finds out where she hid them, he'll eat the lot and he won't sleep tonight. He's turning into a sneaky little thief."

"Like me?"

Hiei turned his head to look directly at Botan, who giggled at his remark.

"Yes, I suppose so," she said. "He can be stubborn and sneaky sometimes, but he's a good boy. I'm always glad to have him and I'm especially glad that my son is also your son, Hiei."

Hiei smiled and closed his eyes as Botan leaned closer to him and kissed his forehead just below his jagan eye.

"I would probably just spoil him or make him too soft," she continued, brushing the backs of her fingers against his cheek. "You teach him how to be strong and to carry himself with honour and pride. I just teach him how to play games and give hugs."

"You taught him not to kill in a sparring session," Hiei said without even thinking. "And you've taught him to be polite and respectful. And because of you, he understands love and friendship. He doesn't need to hold back his feelings because he's not afraid of them. You've done well by him."

"Oh Hiei, that's such a sweet thing to say!"

Botan kissed Hiei's cheek again and a glance in the mirror told him that he was still smiling: and the expression looked quite odd on him. Hiei was not sure that he had ever seen his own face smiling out of happiness before. He had often seen himself smirking in a condescending or cocky manner, but never simply smiling in a contented way.

"You have such a beautiful soul Hiei," Botan said, drawing his attention back to her face. "And although you don't often voice your feelings, when you do, you always do it so eloquently."

"…Eloquently?"

Hiei knew what the word meant, but he had never heard anyone use it around him, least of all towards him.

"You're so clever and noble and yet humble and simplistic," Botan said.

That was also an odd description of himself, Hiei thought.

"You're quite clever yourself," he answered her. "Deceptively so. Mukuro told me about that little trick you pulled giving Monzan a bunch of flowers to give to her."

Botan smiled as gently as she usually did but Hiei saw something change slightly in her eyes.

"It was important for me to make peace with Lady Mukuro," she said. "We couldn't have lived with her if she wouldn't accept me or our children."

"And you want to live with her?" Hiei asked.

"Of course I do," Botan replied without hesitation.

"Even though you know that she initially hated you and Monzan and she disapproved of me marrying you?"

"I thought perhaps she just didn't understand me. I thought that maybe she thought I was just a silly ferry girl with a crush on demon world's sexiest citizen."

Botan kissed Hiei on the cheek again and again he felt his smile widen.

"And I wanted to show her that I was not a fool," she continued. "And nor did I have any designs on marrying you for your position as her heir. I wanted us to be friends, and I thought that the best way to make an offering of peace was to send a message to her. Here in the living world people send different varieties of flowers depending on the message they are trying to send, so I asked Kurama to help me choose some flowers here that would show Mukuro that I wanted to make peace with her and that I accepted and respected her position of authority. And I know my plan worked because she accepts Monzan and she even lets him call her "aunty Mukuro"."

"It was very sneaky of you," he said. "Maybe Monzan gets his sneakiness from you, not me."

"Maybe he does," Botan mused, looking genuinely thoughtful. "But he's better able to hide his sneaky deeds than I am. I'm hopeless at lying or hiding things. I can't keep anything to myself. Monzan can, and he definitely gets that from you… Like how you won't tell me whether I'm going to have a boy or a girl…"

"You asked me not to tell you," Hiei reminded her.

"Yes I did, but it's very sneaky of you to keep it hidden. I would have told you by now if it was the other way around. Maybe you'll accidentally tell me soon."

"Not going to happen."

Botan pouted and Hiei shook his head.

"I don't know how you do it…" she muttered, turning from him. "Dry yourself off, I'm going to put a dressing on that wound for you. You'll let me at least do that, right?"

She looked back over her shoulder at him and he nodded. He shifted the towel around his body to hang around his hips, fully exposing the wound he was still sporting – and always would be. He poked at it experimentally, a little surprised to find that it was both highly sensitive and starting to heal faster than before. He had never suffered a prolonged injury on any part of his body – intentionally or otherwise – and the closest thing he could think about was the hole he had in his head where his jagan eye had been implanted: and that had been left to heal. He tried to push from his mind the small nagging thought that keeping himself injured might prove harder than he had predicted and instead turned his attention to Botan, watching her open up a low cupboard and produce a little plastic case like the one Hiei had seen Kurama take bandages from in his shop. He noted where she had taken it from and made a point to return there when there was no-one else around and steal anything of use from it.

She returned to him with a roll of bandages, her eyes on his wound as she walked. Hiei started to feel a little apprehensive about dealing with any more questions she might have about his persistent injury, but when she knelt down in front of him and touched her hands to his waist he started to lose focus again. He watched her dress his wound with meticulous care and then tucking the end of the bandages back in on themselves. She made to move – possibly to stand up – but stopped short as she noticed the effect her position and actions had had on Hiei. She looked up at him curiously but he turned his head away to avoid having to see the questioningly and almost judgemental look on her face and having to explain himself. However he swiftly turned his head back again as Botan pulled the towel loose from his waist.

And his curious and mildly angered scowl dissolved in a groan of pleasure and appreciation as she gently took hold of his taut manhood in both of her hands and dragged her tongue up the length of it.

* * *

"Oh dear," Botan said, looking about herself with a slight frown. "It looks like they left without us…"

Hiei paused in the kitchen as Botan walked around the dining area, where dirty dishes still laid out on a long table indicated that the others had all been there earlier. When he was sure that Botan was not looking, he carefully recovered the note pinned to the fridge door, and read over it. Written in Yusuke's hand-writing it said: "got bored waiting for you two to finish sucking each other dry, so started without you. Sure you'll manage to catch up, Yusuke. PS we took Monzan and the cakes".

"We have to go," Hiei said, closing his fist around the note and stuffing it into his pants pocket.

"Yes, they've gone up the mountain," Botan replied. "Monzan must be with them, I hope he behaves himself."

Hiei resisted the urge to tell her that Monzan eating his own weight in cakes was their biggest concern, instead focusing on what she had said first.

"Let's just get up the mountain," he said. "I'll carry you, we'll get there faster that way."

"Oh, are you sure?" she asked.

She was looking at him as though he had offered her something that other Hiei never would have, which only made Hiei hate that other Hiei all the more.

"Let's just go," he said.

"I packed you some warm clothes," she replied, moving back over to join him, "We'll need them, it's cold up there."

Hiei followed her back to their room where he reluctantly donned the long coat and gloves she had packed for him, but he drew the line at wearing the knitted cap she had packed. He saw her stuff it into one of her pockets, apparently under the misguided belief that she could convince him to wear it later. He chose to ignore her little act of deception and instead walked her to the back door, looking out up the mountainside. He could not see the others ahead of them but it was a steep climb, and Hiei had no idea how long he had spent in the bathroom with Botan – it had possibly been two hours – so it was possible that the others were already at the top.

"Climb on my back," he said, crouching down in front of Botan.

"Are you sure?" she asked hesitantly. "I'm heavier now you know, and I'm bigger with this bump–"

"I'm not weak woman, now get on!" he insisted.

"Well, alright then…"

She carefully wound her legs around his waist and Hiei hooked his arms around them, waiting for her to grip onto his shoulders and settle against his back before standing up.

"Hold on," he warned her.

She started to tell him that she already knew to hold on, but her voice dissolved into a scream of surprise as he started to run, her hands closing into fists around the material of his coat. It took slightly longer than Hiei had expected to catch up to the others – partly because he had not been running as fast as he usually would for fear of dropping or hurting Botan and partly because the others had made impressive progress up the mountainside – but as they did start to near them and Hiei slowed his pace, he started to realise why Botan was dressed for winter and why she had packed warm clothes for him: they were surrounded by snow.

Hiei slowed to a walk, the snow rapidly getting deeper around him. He could see Kurama, Keiko, Maya and Kuwabara's sister sat on a blanket drinking hot drinks and eating cakes and he instinctively aimed for them, mostly because of the lure of the warmth of the drinks and blanket. As he reached them he gently lowered Botan back down to the ground, where she released her hold, kissed him on the cheek and passed him the stupid hat she had been carrying in her pocket. Without complaint, he put it on.

"Mommy!"

Botan and Hiei turned to see Monzan and Yukina waving at them.

"We're making snowmans!" Monzan called over.

Hiei was unsure what he found more ridiculous: the fact that Monzan was wrapped up in so many layers of clothes that he looked like a dumping with eyes or the fact that Yukina was still dressed in just her knee-length skirt, ankles boots and thin, long sleeved sweater, rolling a giant snowball without gloves.

"Isn't that sweet?" Botan said to Hiei. "But where is Yusuke?"

She looked about herself and Hiei copied her actions, speaking his next thought without giving it due consideration.

"Where's Kuwabara?"

Hiei tensed slightly as he saw every head turn in his direction, multiple pairs of eyes staring at him curiously.

"Not that I care, I'm just curious," he hurriedly added.

"They're at war," Kurama said.

Hiei thought that Kurama perhaps said the word "war" a little too heavily, but he tried to ignore it as just over-suspiciousness on his own part.

"They're having a snowball fight," Keiko added. "You know how immature they can both be sometimes."

"Needless to say, Yusuke's beating Kazuma," Kuwabara's sister said. "They're trying to get us involved."

"But we're not interested," Maya finished.

Hiei and Botan sat down by the others and Botan poured out tea from a flask, adding some sugar and handing it to Hiei along with a cake, which he greedily ate, feeling a little cheated that he had missed breakfast: he was becoming increasingly sympathetic towards Monzan, as he was growing addicted to Yukina's fine cooking himself. As he made his way through his third cake and started on his second cup of tea, Hiei noticed Kuwabara running towards them and then leaping behind a rock as Yusuke appeared, flinging a balled handful of snow at him.

"Hey!" Yusuke called out, waving his arms in the air. "Kuwabara's losing and it's no fun! Somebody come over here and help him! Come on, me against Kuwabara and someone else!"

"Absolutely no way, Yusuke!" Keiko called back. "You throw too hard and it's too cold!"

"It's just a game!" Yusuke said. "Come on, somebody else get over here! Hey Kurama, what about you?"

Yusuke grabbed up some snow, hurriedly compressing it into a ball and hurling it towards Kurama. With almost laughable ease, Kurama reached out an arm and backhanded the projectile away from the group, sending it flying off out of sight.

"No thank you," he called over.

"Damn!" Yusuke groaned, forming another snowball in his hands. "What about you, Hiei?"

He threw a snowball as Hiei, who held up a hand, producing enough heat to melt it before it got close enough to be a threat.

"You guys are so boring…" Yusuke grumbled, making another snowball. "Hey, I bet you wanna play too, right Monzan?"

Yusuke threw the snowball at Monzan, who had been too busy trying to roll over a snowball bigger than himself to notice what had been going on. At the sound of his name being called he started to turn, Yusuke's snowball hitting him hard in the face.

"Ha!" Yusuke said. "C'mon kid, join us!"

Hiei was unsure if Monzan was going to cry or lash out in anger, and when he did finally respond, Hiei felt confused. Instead of reacting extremely, Monzan simply wiped the snow from his face and turned back to Yukina, who was pushing stones into a ready-built snowman that was almost as tall as Kuwabara. Monzan quietly continued rolling over the large snowball he had been working on, lining it up by the snowman Yukina was standing beside, apparently unaffected by what Yusuke had just done to him.

"He knows that he's not allowed to respond with violence," Botan explained when Hiei turned to her for an explanation. "I've had to teach him to contain his responses if someone hits him because I couldn't let him kill the other children at the kindergarten. He knows he's stronger than they are, he doesn't need to prove himself."

Hiei was surprised that any four-year old son of his could be that sensible and rational – especially since Hiei himself was not that sensible or rational.

"What about you, Botan?" Yusuke asked.

"What?" Botan echoed.

She screamed and dropped her tea as a snowball suddenly hit her in the face, knocking her back. Hiei quickly caught her before she fell onto her back, turning to glare at Yusuke, who was laughing. All sense and rationale gone from his mind at the thought of his pregnant wife being hurt, Hiei stood up, intending to beat some sense into Yusuke, only stopping when an enormous snowball suddenly smacked into Yusuke and took him off his feet, burying him in the snow.

"Don't hurt my mommy!" Monzan yelled.

Hiei turned to his son, seeing Yukina standing by him, her hands over her mouth, and the large snowball Monzan had been rolling suddenly gone.

"Monzan!" Botan snapped.

Monzan flinched at the sound, but his eyes did not lose any of their anger.

"He hurt you!" he said sulkily.

"He was just playing, Monzan!" Botan snapped. "That was unnecessary!"

Botan started to stand up but Hiei put up a hand to stop her.

"I'll deal with this," he told her.

"Oh, are you sure?" she asked quietly.

He nodded and stomped over to Monzan, who looking increasingly fearful as he drew near.

"I was defending my mommy's honour," he said stubbornly as Hiei stopped in front of him.

"If someone throws a snowball at your mother, you don't throw one back like that," Hiei said.

Monzan lowered his head and tried to look cute.

"You're technique was completely wrong," Hiei continued. "You put your back into the throw, like this."

Yukina yelped as Hiei hoisted up the snowman at her side and launched it at Yusuke, who had just stood up. Yusuke cried out briefly before he landed facedown in an explosion of snow. Kuwabara stood up from his hiding place to point and laugh and Monzan laughed and clapped his hands. Yusuke re-emerged from the snow after several seconds of chunks of snow shooting out from the point he had fallen in, spitting out a mouthful of snow as he got to his feet.

"Hey, I thought you didn't play games, Hiei," he said, glaring at Hiei almost accusingly.

"I wasn't playing," Hiei replied.

Yusuke gave him a long hard look before moving over to where the others were sat on the blanket. Hiei thought that he had given up his childishness and so he turned to Monzan and touched a hand to his head before turning to Yukina.

"Did you need that?" he asked her, pointing at the remains of the snowman.

She shook her head.

"It's no problem," she said with a smile. "We can play something else – I mean Monzan and I can play something else."

Hiei nodded and started to turn to leave, finding Yusuke approaching Monzan.

"Hey kid, here's a game you can play instead," he said.

"Yusuke, don't do that, it's really mean!" Keiko yelled after him.

"Here you go," Yusuke said, ignoring Keiko and holding out something towards Monzan.

Hiei frowned, moving closer to see what it was: but before he could get a good look at it Monzan had slapped it from Yusuke's hand.

"No!" he yelled at Yusuke, sounding uncharacteristically petulant.

"Aw, what's the matter little guy?" Yusuke said teasingly. "You can't figure it out?"

"Yusuke, don't tease him!" Botan called over.

"What are you doing?" Hiei asked.

"Playing a game with your kid," Yusuke replied, retrieving the item from the snow.

"Give me that," Hiei said, snatching it from him.

He shook the snow from it and slowly turned it over in his hands. It was a simple cube covered in coloured squares, and shaking it by his ear told him it was not a box containing anything.

"It's a Rubik's cube," Yusuke explained, taking it back from Hiei. "You're kid doesn't like it because he can't figure it out. It really, really pisses him off. Watch this."

Hiei's face dropped as he watched Yusuke lean over and wiggle the cube in front of Monzan's face.

"No!" he yelled, smacking it out of Yusuke's hands again.

"Monzan, stop that!" Botan shouted. "And you too, Yusuke!"

"Botan's right, Yusuke," Yukina said, walking over and retrieving the Rubik's cube from the snow. "You shouldn't tease Monzan. He's a good boy, it's unkind to be so cruel to him."

Yusuke sobered a little at Yukina's words, but Hiei's attention was on the object in Yukina's hands.

"It's just a stupid little toy," he said. "I don't understand why he hates it so much."

"It's a puzzle," Yukina explained. "You have to make it so that each side of the cube only has one colour on it. It turns like this, see?"

She gripped each side of the cube and twisted upwards, rotating it around on itself and then twisted it to one side, rotating it around again.

"Hn, that's simple," Hiei scoffed, taking it from her. "It moves it both directions, moving all the colours to one side is easy."

Yusuke snorted and Hiei glared at him.

"I heard a Chinese girl who's about the same age as your son could do it in under two minutes," Yusuke said.

"So it is just a stupid child's game," Hiei said, looking down at the cube again. "If a human child can do it, anyone can."

"It's not as simple as it looks," Yukina warned.

"Hn, just watch."

Yusuke chuckled to himself but Hiei ignored him, turning the rows of the cube around and around until, in mere seconds, he had all the white squares on one side of it.

"You see how easy this is?" he said, showing it to Yusuke, Yukina and Monzan.

"Keep going, smart-ass," Yusuke said.

Hiei gave him a brief glare before turning the cube over and arranging all of the red squares onto one side.

"There, two sides done already," he said, holding it up.

"Except it's not," Yusuke said, grabbing his wrist and forcing his hand around.

Hiei started as he saw that the white side he had created had become a jumbled mess of colours again.

"How did that happen?" he asked.

"All the pieces rotate when you move a section of the cube, brother," Yukina explained.

"But I had completed that side!" Hiei protested.

"That's not how it works," Yusuke said.

"Well that's stupid!" Hiei snapped, throwing the cube away.

Yusuke turned away but not before Hiei caught him smirking darkly. He retrieved the cube and Hiei thought that he intended to torment Monzan with it once more: but instead Yusuke took the cube over to Hiei.

"Aw, what's the matter little guy?" he said teasingly. "You can't figure it out?"

"Fuck off!" Hiei snapped, slapping it from Yusuke's hands.

Yusuke laughed openly, and, much to Hiei's chagrin, he noticed that Kuwabara, Kurama, Keiko, Maya and even Kuwabara's sister were laughing too.

"It's even funnier when you do it!" Yusuke laughed.

"You're all being ridiculous!" Botan said, marching over to them.

She grabbed up the Rubik's cube and wiped the snow from it.

"Yusuke, if you can't do this yourself, don't tease other people about it!" she said, holding it out towards Yusuke.

"I know I can't do it," he replied. "But the difference is, I don't care that I can't do it."

"It's really difficult," Yukina said.

"There is a technique to it," Kurama called over.

"If you're a genius like Kurama it's easy," Yusuke said.

"Oh don't be silly, Yusuke!" Botan said with a short sigh. "It's nothing to do with cunning, it's simple algorithms of possibility. It's just like another day at work in spirit world."

"…What?" Yusuke echoed.

"Watch," she said flatly.

Hiei watched in fascination as Botan pulled off her gloves and handed them to Yusuke before rotating the cube back and forth in various directions, her nimble little fingers working quickly. She seemed to be undoing bits as she did them, but gradually he started to see the colours building up uniformly on each side of the cube, and within a matter of minutes she had each side showing only one colour.

"Easy," she said, pushing it into Yusuke's chest.

"Holy sh…" Yusuke said, taking hold of the Rubik's cube and glancing back and forth between it and Botan in disbelief.

"Now stop trying to torment my son, it's not funny, he's just a child!" she scolded him.

"…Okay…" he said slowly.

"Come on Monzan, we'll make statues instead," Yukina said, beckoning to Monzan to follow her.

Monzan smiled and hurried after her and Yusuke shrugged at Botan.

"He's forgotten about it already," he said. "It was just a bit of fun."

"Well I don't like it," Botan said. "Monzan sometimes gets teased by the other children at the kindergarten and he never lashes out at them, he doesn't need that sort of treatment when he's among friends, it might break his good nature."

"Okay, I'm sorry," Yusuke said. "He's just so–"

"Wait," Hiei interrupted, holding up a hand in front of Yusuke's face. "What did you say about my son getting mistreated by human children?" he asked Botan.

"It's nothing Hiei," she said. "It's mostly just one boy in the class who's very tall for his age, he picks on Monzan for being so small. Monzan doesn't mind because he knows he could snap that boy in half with a wave of his hand, but I don't want him to think that it's okay for him to actually do that."

"You're such a mom, Botan!" Yusuke said with a smile. "Who'd have thought our ditzy, air-headed, thoughtless ferry girl would grow up to be so responsible?"

Botan gave him a flat look but he laughed it off.

"If I wasn't five months pregnant and I still had my oar, I'd team up with Kuwabara and teach you a lesson," she said, poking a finger at his chest.

"Sure you would," he said, nodding at her.

"I have a better idea," Hiei said. "Spar with me. But do it like you mean it."

"Deal," Yusuke said, pulling off his coat with a grin.

Botan sighed and moved away as Hiei began removing his coat: injury or not, he was not going to miss the chance to battle with Yusuke, something he had always enjoyed the challenge of.

"Oh, hey Hiei?" Yusuke said as Hiei pulled off his gloves and hat.

"What?" Hiei asked, turning to him.

Hiei flinched as a snowball hit him square in the face.

"…Idiot," he grumbled, before charging after Yusuke.

* * *

That evening, Hiei sat out on the front porch of the house, watching the sky darken as he drank his way through an entire flask of coffee. The day had been quite tiring, between starting it with a long sex session with Botan, running up the mountain with pregnant Botan on his back, sparring with Yusuke at the mountain peak for some time and then carrying Botan back down the mountain again – something she had said he was not obliged to do but he insisted upon when he had noticed her slipping around a little in the snow. He had reasoned that, since she was carrying his child, the least he could do was carry her.

Hiei heard something soft padding against the floorboards behind him, and a moment later he was joined by Monzan, who was in his pyjamas, his feet bare. He sat down at Hiei's side without looking at him or speaking and produced that irksome Rubik's cube, which had somehow become all jumbled again. Hiei watched for several seconds as his son carefully twisted the sides of the cube, apparently possessing more patience than Hiei himself did, as he appeared to be trying to figure out how Botan had managed to solve the puzzle, only moaning slightly when he inadvertently undid some of his work.

Hiei supposed that what he was witnessing was Botan's patience and problem-solving skills combined with his own persistence and determination. It still amused and amazed him that Monzan continued to display traits of both of his parents, in his appearance, his mannerisms and his personality. It made him feel connected to Botan and, at that moment, it made him think back to his days working for spirit world when Botan had been present but he had barely bothered to notice her: he never could have even begun to imagine that she might one day gift him with something that made him feel more pride than conquering the Dragon of the Darkness Flame had, something that gave his life a strange sense of direction and purpose that it never had before.

"There you are!"

Hiei and Monzan both turned their heads to see Botan approaching them.

"It's almost bed time, sweetie," she said.

"I'm not sleepy," Hiei and Monzan both said, turning away from her together.

"…Okay…" she said slowly.

She moved over to sit down on the other side of Monzan.

"Do you want me to show you how to do that?" she asked him.

He shook his head and continued twisting at the Rubik's cube.

"Well don't spend too long on it, it's almost bed time," she said.

"I'm not sleepy," he muttered.

Botan looked over the top of Monzan's head and Hiei and nodded her head, mouthing out the words "yes he is". Hiei wanted to disagree – the boy seemed perfectly lucid to him – but he said nothing, instead finishing off his coffee. As he drank down the last of the contents of the flask he flinched at the feeling of something by his ear, turning to see Botan's fingers hovering by his face.

"You have a bruise on the side of your face," she said softly.

"I was sparring with Yusuke, you know that," he replied.

He turned to look out at the sky again and again he felt Botan lightly touching at the area around his bruise. He was still a little unaccustomed to her touch, especially the light, loving caresses like the kind she was currently administering. He wondered if that other Hiei had learned how to suppress his defensive reflex whenever she touched him like that, because for Hiei, any touch was still something to be shirked away from as it marked the start of conflict, pain and suffering.

"I'm so glad you're staying here with us this weekend," Botan said.

Hiei turned to her, feeling almost annoyed that she kept saying that like she expected him to run out on her at any moment like that other Hiei did.

"But I was thinking about something," she said, her face becoming serious. "And it's a horrible thought, I know, and please forgive me for saying it, but I can't stop thinking about it. Keiko told me you were playing the "what of" game last night and Kurama said… I just… I can't stop thinking about what she said Kurama said. Can you actually imagine what our lives would be like if you hadn't rescued me from that rock monster? And I know it's a terrible thing to say to you, but… Hiei, if I'm being honest, in that moment when it caught me and I was screaming to you for help, the look on your face when you saw that it was me, I… I honestly thought that you were going to run on and just leave me there to die."

Hiei swallowed hard as he found his throat suddenly very dry. He tried to drink from his flask, having forgotten that he had already finished the contents, his actions being rewarded with a small dribble reaching his tongue.

"It's just that you're so good at thinking these things through," Botan added. "I just wondered how you imagine things might be for us all now if that one little thing had happened differently."

"It wasn't a little thing," Hiei said in a low voice. "And even if it was, even little things can have huge repercussions. It's called "the snowball effect"."

"Yes, I understand that," Botan said.

"You do?" Hiei asked, turning to her with a curious frown.

"Yes, it's something a friend of mine in spirit world often spoke about. She was the guardian of fate, and she often spoke about how one small change can result in something massive with time. Sometimes, after I had collected a soul, she would tell me how things could have turned out differently for that person, but most of the time she would just tell me that a river only ever flows in one direction, and we're just supposed to sail it as best we can because we can't change that."

"Can't change it?"

"Yes, that was what she said. But I always used to say to her "even monkeys fall from trees"."

Hiei pulled a face at Botan but she merely smiled in return, apparently under the belief that what she had just said ought to make perfect sense to him.

"So," she said. "If you had started paddling back upstream instead of following the river in the right direction, if you had just run on that day, what would have happened to us?"

Hiei looked down at Monzan for a long time before looking out at the sky again, finding that the stars were starting to twinkle into existence in the increasing darkness.

"If I had run on and left you?" he asked quietly.

"Yes," she said. "What then?"

"You died," he replied. "Or at least, your human body died. Yusuke, Kurama and even Kuwabara were furious with me and Koenma had me arrested. He took me back to spirit world and tried to make me apologise to you, because by then your spirit had returned there. I refused because I didn't think that I had done anything wrong. Koenma had me banned from spirit world and the living world, and Yusuke and Kurama had me banned from two thirds of demon world. I didn't see or hear from anyone inside this house for ten years after that. During that time, I killed Mukuro's ambassador, Hitoshi, because he called me a human sympathiser. He never gave his famous speech that stopped the war, and so it began. Yusuke and Kurama returned to demon world and permanently reverted to their full demon forms and Koenma and the SDF had the Kakai Barrier put up once more to contain the fighting within demon world. Part of that operation involved purging the living world of any demons there, including Yukina. She was taken from this world by force and returned to the ice village in demon world, where she continues to live, miserable and alone, her spirit crushed, an outcast to the other women there because she chose to leave them and befriend men, their greatest enemy. Kuwabara tried to stop it and he tried to break the Kakai Barrier and go after her, and so the SDF erased his memories of Yukina, how to form his spirit sword and everything he had ever done involving spirit world, including any memories he had of Yusuke or Keiko. Kuwabara works as an apprentice and he lives in a shit-hole little apartment with an obese cat and no pride or purpose. Keiko works long hours in her parents' restaurant because, after Yusuke left, they needed the assistance, but without Yusuke there, they aren't as successful and because she lost Yusuke and had to give up her career and is living with her parents again, Keiko has become bitter. Shuichi, without Kurama possessing his body, has become something quite bizarre, unable to filter his thoughts as tactfully as Kurama did, and he has spent the last three years in an insane asylum because his human mother thinks he is crazy, and her husband left her because she has lost her spirit too. Kurama, in demon world, is steadily and stealthily taking over every bit of spare land in a bid to dominate the other two thirds of demon world, apparently no longer caring for his morals and the compassion he once claimed was his greatest strength. Yusuke has asked Koenma to take down the Kakai Barrier because he misses people in the living world, but it's too late for that and the corruption in all three worlds runs too deeply and there is no trust left on any side. You applied to become a spirit so that you could be Koenma's wife, but you changed your mind after he told you that he wouldn't have children with you and now I suppose you'll return to your life as a ferry girl. You still hate me, but you have forgiven me for what I did. I'm on my way to enact Mukuro's plan to end the war, and it's a suicide mission. I'm the bait to trap Yusuke and Kurama in a confined location so that she can kill us all. It's the only way to break the confidence of the other two armies, and she believes she can initiate peace talks with the three of us out of the way."

After Hiei stopped talking there was a long silence, eventually broken by the sound of Botan sniffling. He turned to her and saw her staring at him with wide, watering eyes shadowed beneath a worried frown, her mouth open, her bottom lip quivering, and her hands clutching at the material of Monzan's pyjamas – apparently Hiei's long speech had been misinterpreted as a bedtime story by the boy, who had fallen asleep slouched against Botan's thigh.

"That's so sad, Hiei!" she whispered. "Why do you think such sad thoughts? You don't have to be sad any more, remember? Nothing that terrible would ever befall any of us! We would always stand by each other: we're friends, all of us, and that's what friends do Hiei, they stick together and help each other in dire times!"

"I don't have any friends left in that reality," Hiei told her frankly. "They either hate me or just can't remember me."

"Well don't think such sad thoughts, because that reality is not real!" Botan insisted. "This is your life now. You did save me that day, and everything else did work out alright, there was no war, and nobody suffered so terribly as you just described."

"Yes, in this reality, there was–"

"And! Mister Hiei! I would never marry Koenma! What a ridiculous thing to say!"

"…He's always wanted you for his wife."

"Yes, he said as much when I asked to become a spirit in order to have a life with you."

"What?"

"Oh Hiei, don't worry about it, it was a long time ago."

"…Defying Koenma and spirit world can't have been easy for you."

"It was the hardest thing I ever had to do by a long margin, but Hiei, for you, I would do it ten times over, and you know that."

Hiei turned to look directly at Botan again, the determination in her eyes almost overwhelming to behold.

"You really mean that," he said.

"Of course I do!" she insisted. "Hiei, I had my doubts about you, you know I did. I thought you were only pursuing me because you saw me naked a few times in the cave–"

"What?'

"–and even when you kept pursuing me, I was still unsure about you. I refused you the first time you asked me to marry you, but when you came back and asked so sweetly that second time, I couldn't refuse you again. But even then I was testing you. I never intended to have sex with you until after we were married–"

"What?"

"–but that night I wanted to go and meet Lady Mukuro, and you refused, and I got upset, and you…"

Botan touched a hand to her mouth and tears spilled from her eyes.

"Oh Hiei, the things you said to me that night…" she said faintly.

Hiei started to get angry. He had not said anything to her that night, that other Hiei had said it. And whatever it was, apparently it had upset her greatly. What a bastard that other Hiei was!

"You have a such a beautiful soul, and the things you said and the way you said it…" she continued. "Do you remember? You took me out into the forest, to the place where our house was later built, and the moonlight was shining down on us, and you held my hands in yours, you looked me in the eye and you… Took my breath away. After that, I couldn't refuse you anything, because I'd never been more sure of anything in my long, long existence. I never thought anyone could feel even a fraction of the emotion you described for me, you made me feel so loved and wanted and special… You started undressing me, and I was wary, but you kept talking, you kept saying such fancy words and then you opened me up with a touch so exquisite and gentle and careful, I felt myself actually swell and bloom… God I love you Hiei."

Botan grabbed the back of Hiei's neck and pulled him towards her, leaning over Monzan to press her lips against Hiei's cheek. Hiei let her pull him and he numbly let her kiss him.

"…Fancy words…?" he muttered.

"I've never forgotten any of them, my love," she whispered into his ear. "And the strength they gave me made defying spirit world and Koenma surprisingly easy."

"…You don't call him "Lord" Koenma any more here…" Hiei muttered.

"Of course I don't," she replied. "He banned you from spirit world and he never visits us here in the living world. He's never met Monzan, and that's inexcusable."

"But… Fancy words…?"

"Very fancy words, and you know it."

Hiei paused, a vague memory creeping up through his thoughts: one of the alternate Hitoshis had warned him about this. One of them had said that he had asked him for advice on what to say to Botan when she had asked to meet Mukuro.

"Fuck," Hiei grumbled. "Another fucking snowball…"

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei suffers a few inexplicable moments of déjà vu that leave him confused and concerned and he spends some time in demon world where he encounters a few problems with Mukuro and is forced to take a deeper interest in demon world politics than he had ever intended to. **Chapter 27 – Talking Politics**


	27. Talking Politics

**Recap:** Smut, snow and non sequitur… Hiei found out that other Hiei charmed Botan with his "fancy words" and he learned just how much (paradise) Botan loves him. Technically speaking, not much happened, because part 3 of this story is (plotwise) almost over now, and I'm basically setting the groundwork for parts 4 and 5.

* * *

 **Chapter 27: Talking Politics**

After the weekend at the house on legs, Hiei returned home with the others – making the unfortunate mistake of agreeing to travel back in Kuwabara's car with him, Yukina, Botan and Monzan, and having to deal with Monzan watching a stupid cartoon showing on a screen that flipped down from the roof of the car, subjecting everyone in the back seats to its nonsense: he lost count of how many times Botan gave him a sympathetic look and told him Monzan was "just a child". That first night back at the tree-house he made sure to once more stay up all night and widen his wound, using the bandages he had stolen from the house they had been staying at to conceal the additional damage. The next morning Monzan went to kindergarten as usual and Botan went with him – which was a bit of a disappointment for Hiei. She did eventually return around the middle of the day, accompanied by Kuwabara, who was carrying bags for her.

"I got a costume for Monzan!" she said as she entered the living room.

Hiei ignored her, instead glaring at Kuwabara.

"Here it is," he said, placing down the bags.

"Thank you so much for carrying those bags for me, you are a dear," Botan said to him. "Would you like some tea, or–"

"You have to go now," Hiei interrupted her, keeping his eyes fixed on Kuwabara.

"Um…" Kuwabara began, scratching at the back of his head nervously. "Yeah, I guess I should get back and help Yukina with her lessons…"

He waved awkwardly at Botan and started to leave, looking back a few times as he went. Hiei watched him go until he was out of sight before turning to Botan.

"Yukina's lessons?" he asked her. "What could Yukina possibly learn from that idiot?"

"Oh, he's teaching her how to read English," Botan replied. "She can speak it a little now, she learned it while she was travelling, but she wants to be able to read it too."

"Hn, ridiculous, I… What the hell is that?"

Hiei stiffened as Botan produced what looked like the pelt of a white bear with clawed toes and a strange bushy tail.

"This is Monzan's costume," she said, her smile fading as she eyed it over. "Only I'm not really sure it will fit him… It's quite difficult to find clothes for him, he has unusual proportions…"

"He's fat," Hiei muttered.

"He's not fat Hiei, he just looks like he is because he's quite bulky for a child."

"Bulky? Isn't that just another word for fat?"

"No. He's sort of muscular already. He starting getting that way when he started running and training, and because he's quite small for his age, it makes it difficult to find clothes for him that don't look like… Something that was meant for a fat baby…"

Hiei's face dropped at Botan's last words and he almost fell over when she produced a set of white fluffy fox ears from the bag.

"I spoke to his teacher, and she agreed that he could go as a fox," she explained. "But I couldn't find any red fox outfits that would fit him, so I had to buy this. I hope it doesn't make him stand out too much, it's very white…"

Botan continued musing about the costume and Monzan and the "play" he was a part of, but Hiei had stopped listening as he found his eyes locking onto the fox ears in her hand. When he looked at them, he felt that sense of déjà vu he often did when he encountered something familiar from another reality, but he could not explain why such a ridiculous item would be familiar to any alternate version of himself. He became so caught up in his thoughts that he had taken the ears from Botan and was turning them over in his hands before he even realised what he had done.

"Yes, I know what you're thinking," Botan said, taking them back from him. "These aren't for children."

She stretched out the elastic band that held the ears together and pulled them onto her head, securing the strap under her chin.

"They're meant for adults," she said, pointing at her head. "But you see Monzan has such thick hair – he gets that from you, sweetie – that I always need to buy him adult-sized headwear."

She removed the ears and handed them back to Hiei.

"Hn, what sane adult would wear such a ridiculous item?" he muttered.

"I don't know, someone who wanted to look like a white fox?"

Hiei tensed as he again felt that strange sense of déjà vu washing over him.

"Has this happened before?" he asked quietly.

"What was that?" Botan asked.

"Has this happened before?" he asked again. "Have you dressed my son up in silly costumes like this before?"

"…Maybe… But it was all in fun, Hiei!"

Hiei nodded and pushed the ears into her hands again. There was something disturbingly familiar about the ears and the thought of an adult dressing up in them that was not sitting very well with Hiei, and the only explanation he could think of for it was that he had experienced it before in the paradise reality, since there was no other reality where such a ridiculous thing would make any sense: but why then did he feel so strongly about it? Was it one of that other Hiei's memories? And if so, why and how had it come to be a part of his own memories?

"It's just a little bit of fun, Hiei," Botan said. "You will be coming along tonight, won't you? It would mean so much to Monzan… And I want to show some of those gossiping bitches that I do actually have a husband!"

"What?"

Botan laughed nervously and shook her head.

"It would be just super if you could come along tonight," she said awkwardly.

Hiei narrowed his eyes at her but she was apparently trying to hide her last little faux pas and so he decided to let it pass.

"As long as you don't make me pretend that I like anything there apart from Monzan then yes, I'll go," he said.

"Oh goody!"

Botan pounced at him, grabbing one of his arms in both of hers and cuddling into his shoulder. It was an almost childish gesture, but her closeness and the reminder that they were once more alone brought a devious smirk to Hiei's face.

"So I'll just see you there tonight?" Botan said, releasing him suddenly and patting him on the shoulder in an almost mockingly jovial fashion.

"…What?" he muttered.

"Yusuke's waiting outside for you," Botan replied, walking away from him.

Hiei made to argue the point, but decided against it. He had, since his return to paradise, been focussing most of his energy on loving Botan, getting to know Monzan, finding out more about the paradise versions of Yukina and Mukuro and figuring out the strange link between paradise and Kuwabara: but now that he had satisfied those immediate needs, he was free to explore his new reality further, he realised. And reacquainting himself with the unique powers and skills of Yusuke and Kurama after ten years of never knowing them was something he was keen to do.

"Kuwabara will take Yukina and me to the kindergarten this evening," Botan reminded him, appearing back in the room. "Keiko will take you and Yusuke. Here are some clean clothes for you, put them on before you meet us there."

"You're telling me what to wear?" Hiei asked her flatly.

"I just don't want you showing up in torn and bloody clothes," she replied, pushing the bundle of clothes towards him.

"Do I get to tell you want to wear?" he asked.

"…If you want to…"

"Fine."

Hiei accepted the clothes, one eyebrow inching upwards as he noticed that it included a bold red sweater.

"Wear something slutty," he said, before turning from her and starting for the door.

"What did you just say?" she snapped.

"You heard," he calmly replied, walking on without breaking his pace.

"I don't own any clothes like that, and even if I did, I would hardly wear them when I'm pregnant!"

Hiei paused at the front door, looking back over his shoulder as Botan stumbled to a halt behind him, glaring at him indignantly.

"I'll make it worth your while," he said in a low voice, before slowly and purposefully dragging the tip of his tongue along his upper lip.

She whimpered and her anger vanished, her eyes growing large and her face turning slightly pink. Hiei grinned at the response he had invoked to easily in her, and she took a step towards him. He turned more fully towards her and although he could not really be sure who initiated it, he shortly found his lips caught up in hers. The kiss ended far too soon for Hiei's liking, and as Botan leaned back from him he started to wonder if he did really want to leave her right then: but the sight of Yusuke leaning towards her and trying to kiss her quickly changed his mood.

"What are you doing?" Botan snapped, pushing him away.

"Oh I'm sorry," Yusuke said, grinning at her. "I thought you were giving out "have a nice day" kisses."

Botan gave him a flat look and took a decisive step back into the house.

"Idiot," Hiei muttered, eying Yusuke over darkly.

"It was worth a try," Yusuke said with a shrug.

"…Still the same cheeky delinquent…" Botan muttered as she closed the door between them.

"Let's go," Yusuke said before launching himself over the railings and leaping into the branches of a nearby tree.

Hiei wanted to ask him where they were going and why – though he suspected that he already knew why – but he stayed quiet, since he was sure that other Hiei would already know what was happening and not need to ask such trivial questions. Hiei was still wary that Kurama might tell the others – or, at the very least, tell Yusuke – that he was an intruder in their plane of existence, and so he was keen not to draw any more unwanted attention to himself, least of all from Yusuke, the former detective.

"Think this is the last time we'll have to do this?" Yusuke asked him as they ran from the temple grounds together.

Hiei was completely confused by Yusuke's question, and only felt even more perplexed when his old ally leapt through a portal to demon world. Deciding that silence was his best strategy – since it avoided him saying something stupid and it was typical of him to be silent in most situations anyway – Hiei said nothing, leaving Yusuke's question hanging unanswered in the air as they started across demon world.

They landed in the lower quadrant of Mukuro's territory and from there, Yusuke led Hiei through a wilderness of land populated only by the most pitiful of demons, eventually passing into land that Hiei did not recognise. They ran for some time in unfamiliar surroundings, which was something of a surprise to Hiei, who prided himself on being very knowledgeable about demon world geography, before eventually they reached a vast stretch of dusty, rocky land that was too familiar to be denied.

They were in Yusuke's territory.

Hiei had not been there since before the mission that he had let Botan die on, and he could not stop himself from tensing, a strange sense of paranoia filling him, his back between his shoulderblades tingling with the expectation of feeling something stab into him from behind at any moment. He supposed it was a reflex he had developed in the ten years since he had been banned from visiting the place he now found himself in, but regardless of knowing that he was safe there and in the company of the ruler of the land, he could not shake the tense suspicion: and when the enormous tower that Yusuke had inherited from Raizen came into their sights, the feeling only intensified.

As they drew closer to their apparent destination, Hiei noticed others nodding greetings to them both, and oddly the citizens of Yusuke's territory made no distinction between Yusuke and Hiei, paying both equal amounts of respect and welcoming. A sensible part of Hiei's mind tried to focus on this and the fact that he was in a reality where he had no need to be so defensive: but as Hiei was of a naturally suspicious and distrusting nature, he stubbornly held onto his concerns and kept himself tensely coiled, ready to leap out of harm's way or draw out his weapon at any moment.

Yusuke slowed and so Hiei did the same as they entered the grounds around Yusuke's tower, turning from the main entrance and starting up an exterior staircase to a high balcony, the view from which was quite impressive.

"Hey," Yusuke said to the group of demons sitting in a circle on the floor there. "Are we late?"

"A little bit," one of them grumbled.

"It wasn't my fault," Yusuke replied. "I had to pry Hiei off his wife with a crow-bar."

Hiei jerked around to glare at Yusuke, who grinned and winked back at him.

"Do you wanna start this?"

Hiei's face dropped.

"You might as well," Yusuke added. "We're all here because of you."

"W-we are?" Hiei muttered, slowly looking around the suddenly expectant faces all looking in his direction.

"Yes," Yusuke said slowly. "I didn't bother inviting Mukuro, or Hitoshi or anyone else because you said you knew more about this than they did anyway, and I figured that was probably true, since you've got a really good grasp of the geography of demon world on a whole."

Hiei slowly swallowed, finding his throat so dry that the action was unusually difficult to execute.

"I think we got a map made up…" Yusuke said, looking around the others.

One of the demons stood up and held out a large piece of paper towards him.

"It's to scale," he said.

"Great," Yusuke said, accepting the map. "So…"

He looked at the map for a long time, nodding sagely and tapping a finger against parts of it occasionally before lowering it to look over the top at his faithful right-hand man Hokushin.

"So how big is it?" he asked.

Hokushin tried to keep his expression neutral, but his eyes clearly showed how stupid he thought Yusuke's question was.

"Put it in a way that I can understand," Yusuke said, holding the map out towards Hiei. "You might as well have this."

Hiei took the map and opened it out, at first seeing nothing more than what looked like an expanse of vegetation surrounded by highlands. It looked like a depiction of a pretty worthless piece of land, and the fact that that other Hiei had called a meeting about it only showed what an idiot he truly was.

"It's about the size of the top of a two okunen trees," Hokushin said.

"It's a valley," Hiei said as he realised why the outer edges of the image showed ridges.

"And it's just full of crap?" Yusuke asked.

"Pretty much," Hokushin replied. "It's of no use to us, but because of its location it's turned into a place where criminals, refugees and defectors gather."

"Where is it?" Hiei asked.

"You tell us, you're the one who complained about it," Yusuke replied, pulling a face at him.

"No, I…"

Hiei barely managed to stop himself from correcting Yusuke and telling him that he was not the one who had complained, rather it had been that other Hiei, the stupid one who actually belonged there.

"It's on the border between Mukuro's territory and Yusuke's," Hokushin said. "And very close to where both territories join Yomi's land. It's being treated the same way as no man's land, except it's not no man's land, it's in the heart of all three lands."

Hiei started to scowl, again wondering why that other Hiei would even care about something so political and pointless: but as he looked down at the map again and considered the valley it depicted and its approximate location, a sickening thought occurred to him.

"You can see it from here," Hokushin added. "Barely. It's beyond the mountain range to the east."

Hiei looked out in the direction he pointed, and as though on cue, a bolt of lighting stabbed at mountains in question. Although he had not really paid as much attention as he should have done at the time, Hiei was almost certain that the valley the others were discussing was the revised location for Mukuro's trap in his own reality: and it seemed strangely ironic that paradise Hiei also had business there at the same time Hiei himself was meant to have in the norm reality.

"Is it worth going down there and checking it out?" Yusuke asked.

"We were thinking of just demolishing it from above," Hokushin replied. "Yomi's not interested since it's not quite in his territory, so it comes down to you, Yusuke, and Hiei. We thought maybe if we could create a landslide and fill the valley with the rocks of the surrounding cliffs, it would stop others from gathering there and using it as a hiding place to ambush passers-by."

"We should probably put out some sort of alert before we do that though, right?" Yusuke said. "I don't want to kill a bunch of demons who are stuck down there."

The map in Hiei's hands tore in half before he realised that he had been tugging at it.

"What do you think Hiei?" Yusuke asked.

"Don't do it," Hiei said, the words leaving his mouth before he had the chance to fully consider them.

"I know you're against the idea, but with all due respect, it's the most efficient method for stopping these monsters," Hokushin responded. "They're beyond being reasoned with and they pose a major threat if they decide to band together and stand against us. It's a necessary step to keep the peace."

Hiei was slightly relieved to hear that other Hiei had the same opinion as he did of what was being proposed, but he was still slightly confused about why that other Hiei had become so involved in something so political. He looked down at the two pieces of map he held, bringing his hands back together to rejoin them along the tear. As he studied the terrain depicted he realised that he would not be able to think of it as something from the paradise reality because it was something that was far too significant in the norm reality. It almost felt as though Hokushin's suggestion in paradise was somehow linked to Mukuro's plans in the norm reality, as though a small part of the norm reality had bled into paradise when Hiei had arrived there. Hiei briefly humoured the notion that perhaps the Dividing Realities attack was more like the Dividing Space attack than he had given it credit for, and perhaps it did leave deadly fissures between the two realities, which would only close when Hiei returned to the reality he had come from, and perhaps those fissures were what allowed aspects of the norm reality to infect the other realities he had visited, like that near miss reality.

Or maybe it was just because he was norm Hiei, and he only belonged in the norm reality, and if he did not return there himself, it would return to him by taking over the paradise reality.

Hiei dropped the map and started to walk away.

"Hiei!" Yusuke called after him. "Where are you going? Are you going down there to check it out? Be careful if you are, there are some sneaky bastards living down there!"

Hiei ignored Yusuke's warning and moved on. He walked all the way back down the steps that connected the balcony the meeting was being held on with the yard below, he crossed the yard outside the tower and passed through the gates beyond. He stopped just outside the gates and stared at the area of land in question on the horizon for a long time before turning sharply and running off as fast as he could. After all, he decided, there was no point in him trying to fake his way through a meeting he had no understanding of, and he had a few more questions he wanted answered anyway, so he figured he might as well confront the source of both problems immediately.

* * *

"Hiei, what a nice surprise."

Hiei narrowed his eyes but said nothing. He could never tell if the sneaky bastard was being sarcastic or not: he was a trained dissembler, after all, and an expert at deception of all kinds.

"I thought you had a meeting with Yusuke?" Mukuro asked, giving Hiei a strange look.

"It's over," he lied. "I need to talk to him."

Mukuro turned her head to look at the demon Hiei was pointing at as though she had forgotten he was standing at her side.

"It's important," Hiei added.

"I imagine it probably is," Mukuro said, slowly turning back to face Hiei, her expression even more disconcerting than before. "You probably don't have long here, and Hitoshi probably is best placed to answer the questions you've come here to ask."

"That's right," Hiei said carefully. "I have to go to the… I have an important event to attend this evening with my family."

Mukuro's face changed again and Hiei had to fight to urge to slide back a step: she was now looking at him as though he were one of the traitors she occasionally had to execute.

"That's nice," Hitoshi said, breaking the tense silence that had been building in the room. "You don't usually spend time with your son in the living world. I'm really glad you've changed your mind about that. They don't stay young and innocent for long, you should enjoy those precious years. I have a daughter myself but I haven't seen her in years. She's following in my footsteps, she trained as a diplomat and she's currently involved in a mission to the–"

"Nobody cares," Hiei interrupted him. "And that's not important anyway. Come with me, I need you to tell some things."

Hitoshi started to obey Hiei's order but stopped short as Mukuro held up a hand to block his path.

"Before you go," she said, again giving Hiei an indescribable and quite terrifying glare. "Satisfy my curiosity – because I don't expect to ever see you again – why did I have the need to perfect the Dividing Realities in your reality, Hiei?"

Hiei tried to keep the surprise from his face, cursing Hitoshi his ability to hide his emotions and wishing that he possessed even a fraction of that skill at that moment.

"I had another Hiei here a short while ago," Mukuro added. "I'm not sure if that was you too, but he, just like you, bore the wound of the Dividing Realities attack and he, just like you, behaved very unusually and asked some pretty stupid questions. If you're not the same Hiei who came here then, I'm even more interested to know why you're here. What went so wrong in your reality that you've had to come here for answers?"

"What makes you think I'm not the Hiei you've always known?" Hiei asked.

"That question only confirms my suspicions," she replied. "Your tone, expression and choice of words only show that you know exactly what I'm talking about. So why are you here? And how long do you intend to stay? Because you should know that you can't stay in a reality other than your own indefinitely. There are several complications that will very soon trip you up if you try to stay somewhere you don't belong."

"Alright fine, weasel words and sleight of hand trickery never were strong points for me," he bit out, glaring purposefully at Hitoshi as he made his first remark. "And you're right, I was sent here by you to find answers to a problem in my own reality. I don't see why it concerns you. You don't have the same problems here and you never could have and as far as you're concerned, I am the same Hiei you've always known."

"To a point you are, yes. But somewhere along the line you must have made a different choice in your life from the Hiei I know, and it must have been a rather large and significant decision, since it was apparently the cause of something disastrous enough that I had to perfect that move and use it on you… So Hiei, I am happy to let you get the answers you need from my ambassador, but firstly you're going to tell me why you're here."

"It's not important."

"Of course it is."

Hiei balled his fists and clenched his jaws tightly together, trying to stay calm despite his mounting urge to break or kill something.

"I don't see why!" he snarled.

"If I know what it is and how it came about, I can make sure that the same thing doesn't happen here," Mukuro said flatly.

"Fine," Hiei growled. "Demon world is at war in my reality and you sent me here to find out what needs to be done to stop the war."

"Demon world is at war?" Hitoshi echoed.

Hiei thought that it was perhaps the first time he had ever seen the ambassador looked shocked by anything, since he usually hid his emotions so well.

"Is it my fault?" he added.

"Yes," Hiei replied.

Mukuro's features thinned sceptically.

"How so?" she asked.

Hiei twitched slightly before answering her.

"He died before he gave that speech that stopped the war before it started in this reality," he said.

"I died?" Hitoshi echoed.

His face then slowly changed and he audibly gulped before talking again.

"You killed me," he said.

Hiei did not bother answering him, since he had not exactly posed his words as a question, more as a statement of fact, so he did not see the need to confirm them. Mukuro sighed and looked down at the ground for a long time before meeting Hiei's eyes again, her expression taking him by surprise: she was looking at him with a saddened and sympathetic look.

"I understand now," she said softly. "That's why you've been spending all your time in the living world, isn't it? The war in your reality probably means that you can't get back to the living world, either because you're caught up in the fighting or spirit world have taken measures to contain all powerful demons with demon world once more. Hitoshi gave that speech more than three years ago. You're here because you haven't been able to reach your wife and son for three years, and you're so glad to see them again, you've forgotten the purpose of you coming here in the first place."

Hiei's initial reaction to Mukuro's words were simply that he was glad he had not ever visited a reality like the one she had just described: that was arguably worse than his own reality, after all, and it was just as possible to have happened somehow, given that his hatred for Hitoshi was in no way related to his marriage to Botan. Or at least, he did not exactly think that it was. Once that idea had passed, he realised that he had to either correct Mukuro or agree with her. Correcting her was probably the right thing to do, but agreeing with her – especially when she looked so sympathetic and agreeable right then – was the smarter thing to do, as it was quick and easy and she would release Hitoshi into his hands.

"Yes," he said slowly. "I miss Botan and Monzan in my own reality, that's why I've been spending so much time with them here."

He contained a smirk at his own ability to manipulate words then, as he had basically given her an honest answer whilst avoiding telling her the whole truth of the situation. But, as he considered that more carefully, he realised just how pathetic it actually was and his smirk faded: after all, he really did miss Botan and Monzan when he was in his own reality, and they were the primary reason he had fought so hard to get back to where he was. And in his own reality, the former had told him she would never like or trust him and the latter did not even exist.

"I'm sorry."

Hiei flinched as Mukuro's real hand landed on his shoulder, the only thing surprising him more than her gesture being the look he found on her face as he once more looked up at her.

"I know how much your family means to you, and how much of an impact they've had on your life," she continued. "The last three years without them must have been very hard for you."

She gave a small, wry smile and Hiei already knew that he was not going to like what she was about to say next.

"The humans have a saying," she said carefully. "They say that: "it's better to have loved and lost than to never love at all". But for some of us that's not always the case. I think for a heart like yours, a mind like yours, it would have been easier if you'd never known of your wife and son than to have them and to lose them."

Hiei concentrated every effort on holding back a curse: it always infuriated him just how well Mukuro understood him, especially when she often accused him of being impetuous and irrational, because, as she did know him so well, maybe she was right to make those (insulting) accusations against his character.

"Tell him everything you can," she said over her shoulder to Hitoshi.

"Of course," Hitoshi said with a nod. "Perhaps we should go to the broadcast arena?"

"Take a ride with the next border patrol," Mukuro said, before turning back to Hiei. "And in case I don't see you again, good luck back in your own reality."

"…Right," Hiei said slowly.

"Obviously you can't stay here for much longer," she added. "You'll have to explain yourself to more than just me if you try it."

Obviously she was referring to Kurama, Hiei concluded. Mukuro knew that Kurama was very sneaky – or "perceptive", as she called it – and so she must have already realised that he would also have noticed Hiei's false presence in their reality.

"I understand," he said, nodding his head.

Mukuro took her hand from his shoulder and stepped aside, letting Hitoshi move forwards to stand before him. Hitoshi smiled at Hiei in a way that was nauseating to look at, but Hiei contained his feelings and turned around to take his leave. Mukuro had given him a lot to think about, but of everything he had learned in the past few minutes, one thing was strikingly obvious and more than a little disconcerting: maintaining his presence in paradise now had an added complication. Now he was going to have to drink coffee to help him evade sleep every day, he was going to have to widen his wound regularly, he was going to have to avoid awkward questions from Kurama and he was going to have to stay away from Mukuro altogether. And of all of those things, the last one was definitely going to be the most difficult to follow through with and explain to the others.

"Something troubling you, Hiei?" Hitoshi asked as they walked the long corridors of Mukuro's fortress together.

"Hn, I wouldn't tell you even if there was," Hiei grunted back.

"I might be able to help," Hitoshi offered. "I've helped you in difficult times in the past. If you need help putting your thoughts into words, I'm happy to help you… Even if you are only here because you killed me in another reality…"

Hiei glanced up at Hitoshi, who was too busy looking pensive to notice. Hiei still despised the idiot, but he was starting to think that he might be able to get more than just answers about the war from him.

* * *

"Hiei and Hitoshi. Don't remember inviting either of you. Did you take your kid with you?"

"No."

"Then stay away from my booth and don't bother me, and I'll stay out of your way and not bother you either."

"It's nice to see again too Koto!"

Hiei turned to glare at Hitoshi as he waved after the fox demon walking away from them.

"Remind me why we're here?" he asked.

"Ambiance," Hitoshi replied, as though it should have been obvious.

"…Start explaining yourself, or you'll be needing an ambulance," Hiei warned him.

"I said "ambiance", not "ambulance"," Hitoshi pointed out.

"You say ambiance, I say ambulance," Hiei said flatly.

"No, it's not a matter of pronunciation, they're two completely different words with completely different meanings, like… Never mind…"

Hiei looked up at the sky, silently noting that it was already past mid-day, and he had no idea what time he was meant to be back in the living world: he supposed that running away from that meeting with Yusuke earlier had been a bad idea, since Yusuke knew where they were supposed to be going that evening and when.

"So this is where I gave my speech from," Hitoshi said suddenly, interrupting Hiei's thoughts. "Obviously I was over there at the broadcasting booth, but since Koto's being as "accommodating" as always, it's probably not worth us going over there. From here, we can broadcast messages in several different ways, including over the radio, on the television and on the emergency channel that over-rides all other communication channels in demon world: which was the channel I used when issuing my speech on–"

"I didn't come here to listen to you talk about your own damn importance!" Hiei snapped irritably. "Get to the point! What did you say to stop the war?"

"Well, I don't really think that's the question I need to answer," Hitoshi replied.

Hiei started to growl.

"Because in your reality, the war is already ongoing, so the speech I gave – which was to stop any conflict from starting – won't really be of much use to you," Hitoshi continued. "You don't need a "let's not go to war" speech, you need a "let's stop this war" speech. Now I've never had to give a speech like that–"

"You have two choices right now, because all you're doing is wasting my time: either tell me what you said, or I'll take it from your mind by force."

Hiei yanked off his bandana and pointed a finger at his closed jagan eye to better illustrate his point.

"It's not that simple, Hiei," Hitoshi said, sounding almost apologetic. "Politics are very complex, and peace talks are especially–"

"Oh, fuck this!"

Hiei grabbed Hitoshi's lapels in one hand and opened his jagan eye, waiting the short amount of time it took for the ambassador's eyes to dilate and grow dull before proceeding to scour the depths of his mind for exactly what he had said that was supposedly so wonderful.

Within two minutes of starting his task, Hiei realised two, equally disturbing things: firstly, the fact that Mukuro's chief diplomatic advisor was so prone to having his mind read was a serious security threat and secondly, Hitoshi could not actually remember the speech he had given, only the thought process he had used to construct it. Which was of no use at all. And so Hiei dropped him to the ground and turned from him with an angered snarl.

"I know you don't exactly put much weight in my opinion on anything," the fox at the broadcast booth called over to Hiei.

"At least you are smart enough to understand that much," he snapped back.

She sighed and rolled her eyes before rising to her feet and nimbly vaulting over her desk. She flipped over in the air and landed soundlessly and gracefully on her feet, a small smile on her face clearly showing how proud she was of her own agility.

"If you really want to learn more about the speech Hitoshi gave three years ago, all you have to do is consider where he gave it from," she said.

"He gave it from here, idiot," Hiei replied. "Since you seem to live here, shouldn't you already know that?"

"I do know that, I was trying to help you, you condescending prick!" she snapped. "His speech was broadcast from here, so naturally, I recorded it and I keep a copy of it in the archive library out back. If you're so desperate to learn about it, ask me nicely, and I'll lend you it."

Hiei was mildly surprised to learn that the fox had her uses after all. He started towards her, the smug smile she adopted only confirming that what he was about to do was the right course of action. She started to do a stupid little dance on the spot, but as Hiei reached her he quickly hit her on the back of the head, knocking her out effortlessly. He had moved on before her body hit the ground, and shortly found his way into the area underneath the stands, where there was an abundance of recording equipment and switchboards. Three doors led off of the first room: two led to toilet facilities and one led into the archive library the fox had just mentioned.

The boxed videos were probably shelved in some sort of logical order, but Hiei was not one for applying patience to anything, so he caught a mini-demon that had been scuttling around the room when he entered and set it to work to find what he sought, on threat of death. The winged little beast took off up the rows of archived videos, shortly selecting one and returning it to Hiei, who gladly snatched it and stuffed it down his shirt, flattening his clothing around it to disguise it as best he could before darting outside again.

On the arena floor ahead of him, Hiei saw that both the fox girl and Hitoshi were still lying unconscious where he had dropped them. The girl probably had a job to do, if the flashing light on the broadcast desk was any indication, and it was probably dangerous to leave the ambassador lying there, especially when he was so defenceless against a mind-probe.

"Hn," Hiei concluded, before running off, leaving them as they were, and taking himself back towards Yusuke's tower.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei goes to Monzan's play! But the night goes in an unexpected direction when Kurama does something that Hiei can't explain and something mildly threatening. Hiei starts studying the video he stole and he opens the "gift" he receives from Kurama, but his reaction to the contents is, he thinks, probably not the one Kurama was going for. **Chapter 28 – Coffee and TV**

 **A/N:** They used videos in Yu Yu Hakusho, so I'm using videos in this fic. They probably should have moved onto DVDs by now, but what the hey.


	28. Coffee and TV

**Recap:** Hiei had some strange déjà vu moments, he went to an ironic meeting in demon world and then he scoured Hitoshi's mind for some answers and stole a video from Koto's archive.

* * *

 **Chapter 28: Coffee and TV**

"You never change. You were a strange little punk the first time I met you, and you're still unpredictable and odd. Where the hell have you been?"

"Never mind about that, it's not important."

Yusuke arched his eyebrows and Hiei turned away to avoid having to look at him.

"I've asked the others to postpone the meeting until tomorrow morning," Yusuke offered. "Think you can manage that? Without randomly running off, I mean."

"Fine," Hiei lied.

He had no intention of faking his way through a meeting about demon world politics he knew nothing about, especially as they concerned an area of land he did not even want to think about, and the issue was one from the paradise reality that he had no clue about. He was going to need the next day alone anyway to watch the video he had stolen from the archive library. He had always wondered exactly what that idiot Hitoshi had said that was so wonderful it had managed to stop a three-way world war and he was determined to find out. It had to be something quite spectacular, and he wondered if hearing the famous speech might change his opinion of diplomats in general.

"It won't take long, Hiei," Yusuke said.

Hiei sighed. They had, for reasons Hiei could not really fathom, hitched a ride with the border patrol back to a portal to living world that was close to their destination there. It was a welcome rest for Hiei, who was starting to feel the need for another coffee, but it was also a strain, as it forced him to converse with Yusuke, who was sat next to him, and apparently determined to discuss that absurd meeting about that valley.

"It's pretty straightforward," Yusuke added. "We should just put out a notice on the emergency broadcast channel that we're filling in the valley and then just do it. Anyone who doesn't evacuate gets what's coming to them."

"You can't evict refugees from a camp of relative safety and immunity without giving them at least 28 days' notice," Hiei said. "And if you do go ahead and blast those rocks into the valley you risk acting in breach of the mutually agreed civil rights' bill and you could cause a major backlash of resentment that could put civilians in a lot more danger than a gathering of some rogue, petty thieves ever could. Not to mention the proximity of the valley to your own headquarters: it wouldn't be wise to act so rashly without full consultation with the relevant representatives of the local communities."

"Um… Okay…" Yusuke said slowly. "Well thanks for that, Kurama."

"What?"

Hiei turned his head sharply, glowering at Yusuke: but as he saw the look on Yusuke's face and considered the exchange that had just passed between them, Hiei soon found himself feeling as though he had just listened to lecture on morals from Kurama, and he found no more reason to argue with Yusuke's remark.

"I guess your lessons are paying off now, huh?" Yusuke asked him.

"Lessons?" Hiei echoed.

"Your lessons," Yusuke said. "You said you were learning more about leadership, and politics and shit so that you'll be ready to take over from Mukuro. She's retiring once your kids grow up, isn't she?"

"She… Um…"

Hiei tried to look as though he understood and accepted what Yusuke had just said, but inside he was floundering. Yusuke had said very little, but every word he had spoken had been deeply significant. Hiei had no idea that life in paradise was quite that complex: but more concerning than that, a part of his mind was still reeling off reasons why Hokushin's plan to fill the valley were wrong. He could hear laws, political considerations and potential implications rattling around his brain, and although he had no understanding of what they were, he seemed to understand how they applied to the situation at hand.

"Oh, fuck…" he grumbled, as realisation finally dawned upon him. "Lessons on politics… With Hitoshi?"

"Yeah, that was part of it, wasn't it?" Yusuke said with a shrug.

Just like the moment he had watched Botan produce those fluffy fox ears from the bag earlier that morning, Hiei was starting to think that his brain was slowly being taken over by that other Hiei: and now his head was full of the thought processes of a diplomat, which could only be the result of the "lessons" that other Hiei had apparently been attending with Hitoshi.

"You okay?" Yusuke asked him.

"Sure, why not?" Hiei replied, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

"…You're still a strange little punk…" Yusuke muttered.

* * *

Paradise was, by far, a superior existence: but sometimes, it was a very confusing and surreal one. As they arrived at the kindergarten, Yusuke, Keiko and Hiei moved over to a table serving refreshments, where Hiei quickly helped himself to four cups of coffee, balancing two in each hand and ignoring the way the other humans eyed him over curiously as he passed them. Near the back of the room they were all gathered in, Hiei could see several things he thought he might never grow accustomed to: Kuwabara was patiently palming off a group of giggling women who kept asking to have their photograph taken with him, Yukina – still dressed in rather stylish human clothing – had her nose stuck in a book littered with foreign text, Botan – of course increasingly noticeably pregnant with Hiei's second son, and, despite their conversation that morning, dressed quite conservatively – was enthusiastically talking at Maya about something and Kurama was standing with his back against the wall, glaring darkly across the room at Hiei with a look that could probably have killed a lesser being in an instant.

Hiei quickly finished off two of his cups of coffee before starting towards Botan, who was far too busy talking to Maya about flowers to notice his approach. He could feel Kurama's eyes burning into him as he walked but Hiei kept his eyes on his wife, hoping that Kurama would act predictably: it was not like Kurama to report anyone for anything, rather he preferred to back them into a corner and force them to confess for themselves, something he considered to be a favour to the guilty party, as he thought it gave them a sense of pride by allowing them to confront their own demons. Whilst Hiei appreciated Kurama's logic – the same logic that had seen Hiei destroy the Chapter Black video when he had finally gotten his hands on it – he was not about to succumb to it now.

Hiei stopped abruptly, his eyes widening as he felt a small tug on his sweater. He subtly touched his hands to his sides, his eyes narrowing again and a small frown playing on his features as he felt two video cases concealed in his clothing instead of just the one he had taken from demon world. He slowly moved his eyes to his side, his head turning slightly later, and unsurprisingly, he found himself looking into a pair of sceptical and mildly intimidating green eyes.

"A little gift," Kurama said to him in a low voice. "Something I think you should consider. I don't know if you're the same Hiei I shared a conversation about alternate realities with on the roof of Genkai's temple a few weeks ago, but whether you are or not is irrelevant: clearly you are not the Hiei of this reality, and that is about all that I need to know. Hopefully you are still a Hiei who has a sense of honour. Consider what I've given you to be a test of your own integrity."

"What is it?" Hiei asked him.

"You'll find out when you open it," Kurama quietly replied. "Which, incidentally, I suggest you do somewhere quite discreet. It does not belong to me and I will be obliged to return it eventually due to its value and origin. But for now it's something I would like you to spend some time acquainting yourself with."

Hiei wanted to ask Kurama what the hell it was: it felt like it was the same size and shape as the video he had taken from demon world, and his initial thought was that it was just another video. But if it was just a video, what could it possibly be a video of, why was it so important and where had it come from that Kurama would have to return it?

"Hey, Botan," Yusuke said, appearing suddenly behind Hiei. "How long 'til this thing kicks off?"

Botan ran her eyes over him with an air of despondency before answering.

"They're opening the doors for us to take our seats in five minutes, Yusuke," she said firmly.

"So… Do I have time for a shit first?" Yusuke asked her.

"Yusuke!" Keiko snapped.

"What?" he yelped, shrugging defensively. "I did a lot of running this morning and then I had to sit on one of those hard bug-things with the border patrol, I need to take a dump!"

"…The toilets are back that way," Keiko said quietly. "But be quick – and remember to wash your hands!"

"Gees, I'm not a kid!"

Yusuke started to leave, and, without giving the implications of his words any thought, Hiei started after him, blurting out his excuse as he went.

"I'm going with him, I need to do this too," he said.

Yusuke looked back over his shoulder, his dark eyes wide in alarm as they met Hiei's.

"You're uh… Coming to the toilet with me, Hiei?" he asked.

Hiei started to realise how odd his words and actions probably seemed but he did his best to keep his panic from showing.

"I need to… Shit too," he lied.

Yusuke nodded, his face softening as he seemingly accepted Hiei's excuse. Together they continued on and into the restroom, where Yusuke promptly started complaining about the size of the toilets and adding something about how he should have been allowed access to the staff facilities before shutting himself into one of the small cubicles. Hiei copied his actions, closing himself into a cubicle and quickly lifting up his sweater to retrieve the two items hidden underneath it. One was, of course, the video he had taken from demon world, which he placed down on the cistern whilst he examined the second item.

"This is so stupid!" Yusuke grumbled.

Hiei glanced at the partition that separated them.

"I can only fit one cheek on this toilet, how the hell am I supposed to aim anything down it?"

Hiei shook his head and lowered his eyes to the item in his hand again. It was in fact another video, though not in the same black glossy box as the one from demon world was, rather it was in a plain white box with some writing on the spine. The writing was merely a date, and removing the video from the box told Hiei no more about the contents, as the video cassette itself had only a sticker with the same date written on it.

"Fuck," he muttered, pushing the cassette back into the box.

"I know!" Yusuke said. "Are they taking the piss with these things? You think it's bad, I'm a lot bigger than you, how do you think it is for me trying to balance on this stupid little thing?"

Hiei rolled his eyes and began concealing the videos under his sweater again. As he arranged his clothes around them to conceal their presence a thought occurred to him: the white box that other video had come in did look slightly familiar.

"Hey, Yusuke?" he said.

"What?" Yusuke responded.

"Are all the videos from the spirit world vault in white boxes?"

"Uh… Yeah, I guess so."

Hiei nodded slowly. He had absolutely no idea why Kurama would have taken a video from spirit world – least of all one that was, according to the date on the spine, some eight years old – but if it really was from spirit world, Kurama's need to return it at least made sense. And he must have stolen it, Hiei thought, which was also quite interesting.

"Yusuke?"

"What?"

"How long does this "play" last?"

"I dunno. Half an hour? Or until one of the kids pisses himself, or starts to cry, I guess."

"…Great…"

Hiei left the cubicle and started towards the door out of the toilets, ignoring Yusuke's excuses called after him about his delay being down to the miniscule, child-sized toilet slowing him down. As he passed the mirrors of the very small, very low down, sinks, Hiei watched his reflection, feeling mildly concerned when he saw that his eyebrows seemed to be settling at an unusual angle, his eyelids looked droopier than usual and there was a faint shadow appearing beneath his eyes. He supposed it was just signs of exhaustion: caffeine worked brilliantly at making him feel alert no matter how tired he was, but he had noticed that it peaked his energy levels for only a brief time before they dropped drastically, leaving him feeling even more exhausted than before.

But as long as he stayed in paradise, he had no other choice.

Staying injured and awake had been relatively easy in the near-miss reality because he had stayed fully dressed, and so his wound had been well concealed, and he had done very little to exhaust himself physically, so missing out on sleep had been easier: but in paradise, where he had a concerned wife constantly undressing him and questioning the wound he had to be more careful, only inflicting enough damage to keep himself injured for a day or so at a time, and travelling between realms and training was ten times harder when it was not accompanied by the usual naps Hiei liked to take throughout the day. The phrase "what price paradise" came to mind, and for some reason, Hiei found himself associating the phrase with Kurama and Kuwabara.

Hiei paused in the hall outside of the room the other parents were gathered in. He briefly entertained the idea that inter-reality travel was starting to make him more insane than the Shuichi of the norm reality, the evidence of this mounting with every passing event he experienced and every bizarre thought that popped up unbidden in his mind.

"Hiei!" Botan called out to him, beckoning to him to join her and smiling at him in way that promptly made all concerns evaporate from his mind.

He moved over to join her, allowing her to wind one of her arms around his and kiss him on the cheek. Together they moved to join the stream of bodies flowing through a double doorway into a hall of sorts, and Hiei found himself thinking something else that seemed like an unnatural observation for his mind to make.

"The other children only have their parents and their siblings here," he said. "Why does my son have an entire entourage here?"

Botan giggled at his question whilst Hiei wondered why he had even noticed as much: though it was odd that so many of their friends were there, he thought, especially Yusuke, Keiko, Kurama and Maya. At least Kuwabara and Yukina were family.

Hiei's top lip curled involuntarily: when had he started thinking about Kuwabara as family?

"Everyone wanted to see Monzan in his costume," Botan eventually answered him as they began moving along a row of seats. "And he does look adorable."

Hiei did not particularly like the idea of his son being paraded around in front of other humans – and more especially in front of Yusuke and Kurama – dressed as some sort of human world animal cub, but he had already decided to tolerate it, partly to educate himself on what sort of life his son led in the living world. Botan had implied that she spoiled him and made him soft, and although Hiei was quite impressed with what he had seen of her mothering skills so far, he was concerned that she was, in some areas at least, being a little too lax with the boy.

The "play" was mercifully brief, and Monzan – dressed as what looked like a polar bear with a horse's tail and fox's ears – was only on stage briefly to speak a line of the story being told. Hiei thought that the boy had done as he was meant to, since he had walked in on cue and said his line without hesitation or stammering like most of the other children had, but apparently he had messed up somehow, because Botan started to get teary-eyed as he delivered his line, and she stood up and clapped a little too enthusiastically when it was over. Everyone began leaving the hall again and Hiei instinctively followed Yukina, who had been sat next to him, only noticing that Botan was not with him once he was on the street outside.

"Wasn't Mon-Mon so cute?" Yukina asked him as he looked about for any sign of Botan.

"I got it all on video," Kuwabara added.

"Let's watch it when we get home!" Yukina suggested.

Hiei turned to his sister then, staring at her incredulously, only feeling all the more amazed when he saw that she was apparently quite serious about her ludicrous suggestion.

"We can watch it now, look," Kuwabara said to her, opening out part of the camera.

Hiei almost fell over when the others all gathered around a small screen replaying what they had just spent the last half an hour watching live. He was exceptionally glad that mere seconds later Botan exited the kindergarten with Monzan at her side, still in costume, holding her hand. She was still sniffling and Monzan looked worried, which in Hiei's mind confirmed that the boy had messed up somehow.

"Wasn't that wonderful?" she asked him as she joined him.

"…Sure…" he lied.

"Wasn't Monzan the best in the show?" she asked, smiling down at Monzan.

"Um…"

Botan started to give Hiei a questioning look but he was saved the bother of having to answer her when Monzan started pulling off his fox ears.

"Don't lose those if you take them off now," she warned him.

"But they make me itchy," Monzan moaned, pulling the ears off regardless.

"Hey, gimme those," Yusuke said.

Monzan obediently handed the fox ears to Yusuke, who took them and promptly forced them onto Kurama, who merely tensed slightly until he had finished his task.

"Look Monzan, it's Youko Kurama!" Yusuke said, pointing at Kurama. "Do the face," he added under his breath, elbowing Kurama.

Kurama pulled a pained expression for a moment before baring his teeth and making a growling noise. Monzan started to laugh and clap his hands and Kurama let out a small sigh before removing the ears again.

And again Hiei felt another overwhelming sense of déjà vu. By Monzan's reaction to what had just happened, it was obviously a game Yusuke and Kurama played with him in the paradise reality, but the sight of Kurama wearing the fake, furry fox ears and making a stupid growling noise was so familiar in Hiei's mind it felt like a moment of history repeating itself: which again left him wondering if assimilation in another reality was actually possible. Maybe he was starting to acquire some of that other Hiei's memories, and maybe if he could acquire more, he could stabilise his presence in paradise and no longer have to keep wounding himself.

Hiei did wonder about the logic behind what seemed to be happening, but he decided that maybe it was just that he would be able to stay in the paradise reality because it was where he belonged, it was the direction his life was supposed to have taken, and all those other realities had merely been jokes and mistakes.

"Okay, I think that's enough excitement for tonight," Botan said. "Home?" she asked Monzan.

"Aren't we going for a few drinks now?" Yusuke asked, looking around the others.

"No," Hiei answered him before anyone else could.

Yusuke gave him a flat look but Hiei turned his back on him.

"I'll just see you in the morning then," Yusuke called after him. "We need to finish off what we didn't do today in demon world."

Hiei waved a hand by his shoulder but did not bother turning around. He was not exactly relishing the thought of returning to the meeting he had fled from that morning to debate over something he barely understood the origins of, but he also knew that it was one of the downsides of living in paradise, and frankly a small price to pay for the luxurious life that it allowed him to live. And hopefully, he thought to himself, he might acquire more of that other Hiei's memories before the next morning and be better prepared for the reconvened meeting.

Hiei paused as he realised that following Botan and Monzan had led him to Kuwabara's car, the sight of which still made him feel strangely uneasy, as it was one of the few things that only existed in paradise.

"We might have enough time to watch a cartoon on the way home!" Botan said to Monzan.

"I'll meet you there," Hiei said.

He turned and took off, Botan's cry of his name fading rapidly as he left her far behind him. Not only was he not really comfortable sitting in that car again, but the thought of doing so whilst Monzan squealed over another idiotic animated presentation was too much to bear. He decided to instead just get home, open his wound a little more and redress it before Botan and Monzan returned and then get Botan to make him some extra strong coffee. After that he intended to fake falling asleep with her and then sneak out to somewhere where he could watch the two videos he was still carrying.

* * *

After much sneaking about the old lady's temple after he was sure that Yukina and Kuwabara had gone to bed, Hiei eventually located a television and video player in the basement – along with the strange collection of gaming machines the old lady had kept down there. He had not wanted to risk watching the videos in his own house: the video he had stolen from demon world was not something he was worried about being caught watching, but as he had no idea what the video Kurama had given him might contain – and especially since he suspected it to be from spirit world – he did not want to risk anyone walking in on him watching it, least of all Botan.

Hiei suspected that the video Kurama had given him was going to contain something that would either make even Botan suspicious of Hiei's presence in the paradise reality or else that it contained something Kurama hoped would make Hiei leave. Hiei supposed that Kurama probably understood his conscience better than anyone else, so it was likely to be something designed to make him feel guilty: all the more reason why he could not risk being caught watching it.

And so Hiei set aside the video from demon world and instead loaded the video Kurama had given him into the video player first before sitting down onto the ground in front of the television expectantly. When the opening sequence showed a series of increasingly ridiculous opening logos for "Koenma Productions", all doubts about the origin of the video were vanquished from Hiei's mind. He had thought that the stupid opening sequence had been ludicrous, but when it was merely followed by what appeared to be a blue-tone security tape of Koenma's (empty) office, the whole thing seemed even more absurd. A string of numbers in one corner of the screen confirmed that the video was of the same date marked on the label on the cassette and the spine of the video case, and apart from the ticking clock by that date, nothing on the screen was moving.

Hiei started to wonder if perhaps the video would contain some sort of subliminal message, and he wondered if he ought to just destroy it: though hypnosis was not a tactic Kurama was known for employing. However, before he could make up his mind about destroying the video, something moved by the top of the screen, the office doors opening, and Koenma walked into the room ahead of a bumbling blue ogre.

"That was awful! Next time when I order peppermint tea, I expect it to be hot!" the little brat said.

"I'm so sorry Sir," the ogre said pitifully. "I had to queue so long to collect your food order, the tea had started to turn cold–"

"No excuses, ogre!" Koenma snapped.

"I'm sorry Sir. Oh, and Miss Botan wants to see you about something as soon as you're free."

Even though he was watching the conversation through a television, Hiei could feel the tension that started to build in Koenma's office after the ogre's last words.

"Why didn't you tell me that before I went for lunch?" Koenma asked quietly.

"Well, because you said thinking about Miss Botan gives you indigestion, Sir," the ogre replied.

"I said thinking about Botan makes my heart yearn, idiot!"

"Oh… I thought you said thinking about Miss Botan gave you heart burn, Sir…"

Koenma kicked over a potted plant – which was actually quite a feat for a toddler – and then disappeared off-camera for several seconds. When he returned he was suddenly in his adult form. He sat down behind his desk and produced a hand mirror from a drawer at his side, preoccupying himself with primping his hair.

"Are you ready to see her now, Lord Koenma?" the ogre asked.

"I'll call her myself when I'm ready," Koenma replied, his eyes never moving from his reflection. "You get out of here, I don't need you hanging around ruining my chances."

"Oh, are you going to ask Miss Botan to be your wife again?"

Koenma slammed the mirror down onto his desk, jerking slightly when it shattered. The glare he gave the ogre was, Hiei supposed, about as intimidating as such a limp-wristed, pretty-boy diplomat could manage, and the ogre was suitably terrified, issuing a serious of apologies and bowing his way out of the office. Once he was gone Koenma sighed, pushing the shards of broken mirror away from himself with the remains of the mirror handle. He took several deep breaths before removing his pacifier and placing it to one side and then pushing a button on his desk.

"Botan, report Lord Koenma's office," he said.

Hiei quirked an eyebrow as he watched the idiotic prince of spirit world proceed to pass the next few minutes by jumping through a range of positions in his chair, presumably trying to find what he thought was the best one to greet Botan's entrance with. Hiei started to wonder if this video was meant to be a comedy: maybe Kurama had given it to him to amuse him and welcome him to the paradise reality.

"Lord Koenma, Sir," Botan said, walking through the doors of the office as Koenma was between poses.

She tilted her head slightly and gave him a strange look before banishing her oar and moving to stand in front of his desk.

"I need to discuss something very important with you, Sir," she said.

Hiei could not tell if she was ignoring Koenma's awkwardness out of politeness or if she genuinely did not notice it.

"Of course, Botan," Koenma answered her. "You know you can always talk to me about anything any time you want to."

Hiei clenched his fists as he saw the way Koenma looked up at Botan standing before him. It was the same look he gave her back in the norm reality when he had been purporting to be her future husband. In fact, Hiei thought with a slightly sickening unease, it was the same look Koenma had given him when he had asked after Botan, right before Hiei had confessed to letting the rock monster kill her: apparently the little brat had been lusting after his favourite ferry girl a lot longer than even Botan realised.

"Oh dear, a broken mirror!" Botan said, pointing at the reflective shards on Koenma's desk. "That's a portent of bad luck!"

"…The ogre broke it with his ugly face," Koenma replied, sounding momentarily like he was back in his toddler form. "So you wanted to see me about something?"

"Yes Sir, I did. You remember that we spoke some time ago about how it may one day be possible for me to retire from my duties as a ferry girl and become a spirit, and live anywhere of my choosing?" Botan said carefully.

Koenma smirked slightly before pretending to look serious.

"Yes, of course I remember," he said to her. "We spoke about that when I asked you to think about becoming my wife."

"Yes, I know, Sir," she said, looking down at her sleeve-covered hands and fidgeting slightly. "And do you also remember what I told a few months ago, about Hiei?"

Hiei sat forwards, his interest in the video suddenly peaked.

"Um…" Koenma began, his face darkening and his jaw squaring in evident displeasure. "You've told me a lot of things about Hiei this last year or so. Which one in particular are you referring to this time?"

"That he asked me to marry him?" Botan replied.

"…How could I forget?" Koenma growled, sitting back hard in his chair, his face suddenly stern. "A former criminal and murderous S class demon asking one of spirit world's kindest and gentlest ferry girls to be his wife: it's not exactly something I've been able to overlook."

"Well the thing is Sir, he asked me again last night," Botan said.

"Would you like me to deploy the SDF to deal with this?"

"No, of course not, Sir!"

"Because I have the power to get that done."

"No, Sir, you don't understand: I'm not complaining. Quite the opposite, in fact… Hiei asked me to marry him and I said yes… Lord Koenma Sir…"

Koenma visibly twitched but said nothing.

"And I was wondering if that offer of retiring from my duties as a ferry girl was still open to me," Botan continued. "I'm especially interested in the part where I become human for ten years, because you did say that during that time I can have children, and I would want to at least have–"

Botan stopped abruptly as Koenma slammed a fist onto his desk, the remains of his hand mirror jumping into the air before falling back again with a clatter.

"I don't approve of this, Botan," he said in a low voice. "You know I don't. I never have. I told you as much the first time you told me he was showing an interest in you. I don't approve of you getting involved with him, I don't approve of you giving up your duties as a ferry girl to become his wife and frankly I draw the line at procreation. You're a spirit, Botan, and Hiei is a demon. Do you understand the differences between the two of you?"

"…No I don't understand," Botan flatly replied. "I've only been ferrying souls from the living world since the days when there were no barriers between demon world and the other worlds, I've only been recovering the souls of those possessed, influenced or even just acquainted with demons for several hundred years and I only worked on a few cases as Yusuke's assistant when he was spirit detective. Please Sir, do enlighten me: what are the differences between a spirit and a demon?"

Hiei smirked smugly to himself as he watched Koenma's face twist in increasing outrage at Botan's blatant and unashamed sarcasm.

"I'm not denying that you're a hard worker, Botan," Koenma said slowly. "Nor am I denying that you're knowledgeable about demons. What does concern me is that you tend to see the best in people, and I'm worried that you've forgotten how we came to know Hiei in the first place. You do remember that he was a criminal, who broke into my vault, killing guards in the process, and he stole one of spirit world's treasures, which he used against Keiko Yukimura and he then tried to bribe Yusuke into surrendering the other two items to him. He tried to kill Yusuke and he nearly killed you when you were forced to protect Keiko."

"That was a long time ago, Sir," Botan plainly replied. "And it was your idea that Hiei and Kurama should help out Yusuke and Kuwabara on any missions you assigned."

"Yes, but Hiei has never really lost that harsh and cruel edge to his personality," Koenma said. "Kurama may have mellowed since merging with Shuichi, but Hiei is still 100 percent demon and still 100 percent unreliable and 100 percent unpredictable. He didn't even want to help out on the last mission you did together. And, more importantly, because he still thinks and acts like the demon that he is, he won't ever treat you the way your friends in spirit world and the living world do."

"…What are you trying to say to me, Sir?"

"I'm trying to tell you that he will hurt you. Physically and mentally."

"You're wrong."

"I wish I was, but I know that I'm not. Once he gets what he wants from you, he will hurt and discard you. And when he's taking what he wants, he won't be gentle about that, either."

"You're wrong. You don't understand at all. I'm going to retire from my duties here and become a spirit, and I'm doing it so that I can marry Hiei. If you won't help me with this, I'll just go directly to King Enma with my case."

Koenma visibly squirmed before picking up his pacifier and sticking it back into his mouth. Hiei almost wanted to laugh – the sight of the adult form Koenma acting so childish, resorting to sucking on his pacifier when he wanted to sulk, was beyond ridiculous.

"I don't recommend that you go directly to my father," he eventually said. "If you go over my head with this, it will be seen as insubordination and you won't stand a chance of getting what you want."

"Then stop being so difficult," Botan replied, crossing her arms stubbornly. "Help me. We've always been good friends and I've always helped you whenever you needed me to."

"I'm trying to be a "good friend" to you now, Botan," Koenma answered her. "I'm trying, as kindly as I can, to warn you that Hiei will hurt you."

"And I'm trying, as kindly as I can, to tell you that you don't know what you're talking about, Sir."

Botan had perhaps said "Sir" a little too harshly and Hiei silently wondered how much longer her boss was going to sit and listen to her talk down to him the way she was.

"Botan, please," Koenma began. "I don't think you understand the physical nature of a demon's desires–"

"Oh, you're talking about sex now?" Botan interrupted him. "Well that's a little rude, don't you think? And it's hardly any of your business."

"I'm not trying to pry," Koenma replied. "I'm trying to protect you from the violent ways of a demon."

"And that proves that you don't understand at all, because Hiei is not "violent" towards me," Botan said in a low voice. "Quite the opposite, in fact – not that it's any of your business."

"Well actually, I… Wait, what?"

The look on Koenma's face was literally priceless. Of all the treasures and riches Hiei had stolen in his life, all dulled in comparison to the sight of that brat – who had underestimated him for years and, in the norm reality, stolen Botan from him – reeling in shock.

"Are you telling me that you've already…?" Koenma asked, looking like he might cry as he spoke. "With… With Hiei?"

Botan nodded and Koenma made a noise that sounded like a rat demon sneezing out a part of its digestive system.

"So you see Sir, you've misunderstood," Botan said gently. "Hiei and I are in love, and we intend to get married. If you won't give me your blessing and help me leave spirit world, I am going to "go over your head" as you put it. You leave me no other choice, Lord Koenma."

"You can't have wanted this," Koenma said suddenly. "You were never interested in him before. Something changed."

Botan nodded calmly.

"Yes Sir, something did change," she agreed. "I've come to see a side of Hiei that I never knew existed. I think because he was always so distant I never really understood him before, but now that I do, I also understand that I want to be a part of his life. I can't really explain it Sir, and I know you don't like it, but I've never been surer of anything. Ever. This is the right thing for me to do, it's something that I was meant to do. It's fate, Lord Koenma."

Koenma snorted and gave Botan a long, hard look as though he expected her to start laughing or surrender to his way of thinking.

"Fate?" he eventually said. "Why don't you ask your good friend, the guardian of fate, what she thinks about this?"

"I already have, Sir," Botan replied. "She said that life is like a river, flowing in one direction, and that we sail it as best we can, but, no matter what we do, we can't ever change the direction it takes us in."

"…And what do you suppose she meant by that?" Koenma asked.

"Well Sir, I suppose she meant that I could refuse Hiei's advances and spend the rest of my life alone and wondering or I could accept them and spend the rest of my life happy, or maybe you will be right and Hiei will leave me and I will be alone again. Either way, it seems I be as well stick my oar in the water and give it a try, because I have nothing to lose and rather a lot to gain."

"Interesting…"

"But that's a very cold and clinical way to think about things, Lord Koenma. And what I have with Hiei is certainly not cold or clinical."

Koenma gave a long sigh before answering.

"You're telling me that the river of your life merges with the river of Hiei's life, and whether it happens now, with my consent, or some time later without my consent, it's going to happen anyway," he said. "Which, I must say, is the most interesting interpretation of fate I've ever heard."

"Those were your words, Sir, not mine," Botan pointed out.

Koenma nodded.

"Botan I care about you as more than a colleague and friend, and I want you to be happy," he said. "But I can't agree with this. I'm sorry."

Botan nodded.

"I'm sorry too, Junior," she said. "Because I now have to go over your head."

There was a long silence then and Hiei wondered if the video was stuck on pause, as nothing was moving on the screen. Eventually the moment ended when Koenma gave a small frown, and Hiei was sure that the prince was about to try to change Botan's mind again: but what he did say made Hiei laugh out loud.

"Did you just call me "Junior"?"

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** More strange moments of déjà vu convince Hiei that he is inheriting traits and memories of that other Hiei – is it just a merge or is he actually turning into that other Hiei? Kurama asks Hiei a question he had almost forgotten he knew the answer to and the meeting at Yusuke's tower is reconvened: until something unexpected interrupts it and throws everything into chaos. **Chapter 29 – That Other Hiei**


	29. That Other Hiei

**Recap:** Hiei believed that he was assimilating to life in paradise by merging with – or perhaps just becoming – that other Hiei, and he watched a video (given to him by Kurama) of Botan's initial defiance of spirit world in order to become his wife.

* * *

 **Chapter 29: That Other Hiei**

Hiei yawned as he waited for the video to rewind. He had watched it seven times, but it had yet to lose its entertainment value. He was not sure which part he liked best: Botan's sarcasm, Koenma's squirming, Botan's new name for Koenma or the prolonged recording (some forty-five minutes or more) of Koenma's temper tantrum after Botan left his office to confront King Enma himself with her request. As he waited for the video to rewind, Hiei picked up the other video box at his side, eying it over, finding it suddenly far less appealing. He no longer really cared what it was that Hitoshi had said to stop the war in demon world from starting – in fact, he doubted that he ever had cared – though he was still mildly curious to see who had attended the speech and if they would be visible on the recording. A glance at the thin windows above his head told him it was approaching dawn, so he decided to watch the demon world video next before returning home: though he really wanted to just keep re-watching the spirit world video.

Hiei wondered then what Kurama's intentions had been by giving him the video. He still thought that the fox demon had been trying to make him feel guilty and confess his identity or else just leave the paradise reality, but, even after seven viewings, Hiei felt anything but guilt. In fact, he felt quite pleased with himself. He felt sure that he had done the right thing by returning to paradise and choosing to stay there and he felt even more confident about his relationship with Botan: and according to Botan on that video, even the guardian of fate had said that they were meant to be together one way or another.

The video stopped rewinding and Hiei was plunged into silence: and in that moment he remembered why the guardian of fate's name seemed significant. He had met her before. She was that erratic, bushy-haired woman Koenma had brought to the living world with him in the near miss reality. She had been ranting on about something being amiss there and Kurama and Koenma had decided that it was Hiei, and, although the whole situation had been quite annoying and inconvenient, Hiei had, deep down, accepted that the crazy bitch was right: he was out of place in that reality.

Hiei swapped the videos, starting the demon world video as he replaced the spirit world video to its box. Unlike the ridiculous four minutes of mindless self indulgence Koenma had taped onto the start of the spirit world video, the demon world video launched straight into the subject at hand, showing that noisy fox girl sat at her desk, looking inappropriately cheerful as she announced that the ambassador for Mukuro's territory had an important talk to deliver regarding the current eruption of terrorist activity across all sectors of demon world. Then Hitoshi – the ugly bastard that he was – stepped onto the screen, nodding politely at the fox demon and accepting her microphone from her.

"Denizens of demon world," he began, clutching the microphone by his mouth with one hand and making a grand hand gesture with the other.

Hiei paused the video to groan. Hitoshi was supposedly a genius, and the speech he had given had saved demon world from a devastating war: why then had he started it with such a ridiculous opening line as "denizens of demon world"?

"Idiot," Hiei sighed, pressing play again.

He sat, with one hand over half of his face, and watched as the famous ambassador spoke for over half an hour, making excessive hand gestures, all the while wondering why he wasted so many of his fancy words saying something that could have been said in less than five minutes.

* * *

Hiei twitched awake to the combined sounds of an alarm clock and Botan groaning at his side. He had successfully snuck his way back into bed with her in the early hours of the morning without anyone noticing his absence during the night, and since it had already been morning, he had allowed himself to sleep for the hour or so until Botan's alarm sounded. She started to move from the bed but before he had even fully opened his eyes Hiei sat up and grabbed his arms around her waist from behind, pulling her back down. She yelped and her arms flailed at her sides, but Hiei had a good hold of her and he easily controlled her drop back down onto the mattress at his side.

"Well good morning to you too," she said.

Hiei ignored the hint of sarcasm in her voice, instead keeping one arm locked around her and moving his other hand to her hair, pushing it aside to expose her neck. He then promptly bit down on her.

"Ow, Hiei!" she yelped.

He opened his jaws again and then began licking along the reddened dents he had left on her skin.

"Oh, Hiei!" she groaned, leaning into him.

He moved one hand under her chin, holding her head up, and slid his other hand up her body to her shoulder, slowly pulling down the strap of her night-gown, kissing his way along her shoulder as he went.

"Nng, Hiei…" she muttered.

When the seam of her nightdress started to tear she jerked slightly.

"Hiei, I don't have time for this right now!" she said. "I have to get Monzan up and ready for kindergarten."

"Kindergarten?" Hiei said, releasing her instantly.

"Yes," Botan replied, moving around to sit up.

"And he'll be gone for many hours then…" Hiei mused to himself.

"Yes, so just let me get him sorted out and then we can…"

Hiei looked up at Botan as she started to get out of bed. She stood up beside the bed, and for several seconds seemed to be pinned to the spot as she glanced back and forth between the door and Hiei.

"You're so mean to me sometimes, Hiei!" she moaned, frowning and pouting like Monzan did when he was told to stop eating cakes. "You know perfectly well that I feel just as frisky as you do first thing in the morning, and the longer I stay in bed, the worse it gets!"

Hiei could not stop his eyebrows from rising up in surprise at her words, and upon seeing his reaction she growled at him, which only served to surprise him further.

"And don't look at me like that!" she said. "It's like you think I'm being ridiculous!"

"No," Hiei corrected her. "I'm just surprised that you feel that way. Usually women don't feel that way at this time of day."

Botan gave Hiei a strange look, and for a moment he wondered if he had said something terribly wrong.

"I never used to feel this way at this time of day, Mister Hiei," she said tightly. "At least, not until I married you, that is. And then you started doing exactly what you just did a moment ago, and before long my body's clock of horniness started syncing up to yours!"

Hiei started to smirk and he allowed one eyebrow to twist upwards, at which Botan's anger faded into shocked indignation, and she snatched up a pillow, smacking him over the head with it.

"And don't look at me like that, either!" she wailed. "You know I can't resist you when you pull sexy faces at me!"

Hiei pushed the pillow aside in time to see Botan fleeing the room. He gave a "hn" and lay down onto his back, listening to Botan's feet scurrying around in a nearby room. After several frantic minutes she reappeared in the room in a dress and with her hair pinned haphazardly up around her head.

"Stop it!" she warned, pointing an accusing finger at Hiei, who had done no more than look in her direction.

He heard her hurriedly moving through the house and he began to frown when she veered in the wrong direction for Monzan's bedroom. Hiei wondered if he had confused her completely by trying to lure her into staying in bed longer, and he began to become confused himself when several minutes passed and still she did not go to Monzan's room. He could hear her moving about in the kitchen, and eventually he began to smell warm food being prepared. On instinct he got out of bed and started to follow the scent: after a night of no sleep and only coffee for sustenance he was quite hungry, after all.

As he approached the kitchen door it opened ahead of him and Hiei looked down to see Monzan stumbling into the room, still in his pyjamas, his eyes half-closed and his nose in the air.

Hiei sighed and followed after the boy, who went straight to the dining room and sat himself down at the table, rubbing sleepily at his eyes.

"Is this how you always wake him up?" Hiei called through to Botan as he approached the table. "With the smell of food?"

"Monzan likes to sleep and he doesn't get up without motivation," Botan called back. "He gets that from his father."

Hiei hesitated, an idea about going back into the kitchen and showing Botan that he was anything but lacking in motivation passing through his mind, but as he saw Monzan smiling up at him he found the strength to restrain himself and he sat down at the table. Botan shortly joined them, placing down bowls of steaming hot miso soup in front of them.

"Remember honey, this isn't a race, so take your time," she said as she sat down.

"Hn, I'm not an idiot," Hiei scoffed.

"I was speaking to our son," Botan said, smiling to herself in amusement. "He sometimes plays a game with Yusuke, it's like a drinking game, but with water, and it's taught him bad habits about drinking down anything too quickly."

Hiei nodded and picked up his own bowl, taking a slow sip just in case. Botan started commenting on how nice she thought it was to have her family eat breakfast together, but Hiei was too distracted to really concentrate on what she was saying: a lock of her hair had fallen loose from its ties, hanging down one side of her face and curling slightly at the ends, and for some reason it was having an almost hypnotic effect on him. He started to think about pulling loose the rest of her hair, something about the idea of it being wild and free appealing to him in more ways than one. He was almost glad when she left the table with Monzan because it allowed him to eat without the distraction: though he found himself concentrating on listening to his wife and son as they moved about the house together, the sounds of their voices oddly comforting to him. Until they started arguing over a hairbrush.

Hiei stood up from the table, debating whether he ought to interrupt or if he just wanted to stay out of it, and as he was trying to decide he heard movement by the front door. Glad of the distraction, Hiei started towards to door, stopping as he reached the entranceway and Kuwabara stepped inside the house.

"Morning Hiei," he said.

"Kazuma," Hiei replied with a nod.

Hiei turned around and started back into the house, but his stride became a little erratic and he felt his eyes widen as he realised what he had just said. As he walked back towards the dining area he wondered what the hell a "kazuma" was – and as he reached the table he finally remember that it was name Yukina called Kuwabara. Hiei was not even sure how he knew that Kuwabara's first name was Kazuma, much less why he had just addressed him by it.

It was that other Hiei. That other Hiei was slowly taking over his mind. Hiei was unsure if that was a good thing or not: becoming that other Hiei meant he should be able to stay in paradise indefinitely, but it also meant becoming that other Hiei, and Hiei hated that other Hiei.

"Uh, are you okay?"

Hiei turned his head sharply, glaring at Kuwabara, who was giving him a strange look.

"You just called me Kazuma," he said slowly. "And now you're sweating and muttering to yourself."

"It's very hot in here!" Hiei snapped irritably. "And I always call you Kazuma. It's to differentiate between… It's because of the… It was when the… Why are you here?"

"…To take Monzan to kindergarten?"

"Well get on with it then!"

Kuwabara looked about himself before shrugging.

"I guess he's not ready yet," he concluded.

Hiei touched a hand to the side of his face, alarmed to feel that he was actually sweating just as Kuwabara had told him he was. Did that mean that the other thing he had said was true too: had he also been muttering to himself?

"I'm going outside," Hiei said abruptly. "To… Cool down…"

"Okay…" Kuwabara said, watching him leave with a curious frown.

Hiei ignored him, hurrying out of the house and down to the ground, quickly taking himself to the temple beyond, with the intention of dunking himself into one of the ponds there. As he neared the temple he noticed that Yukina was sat on the steps, still fully engrossed in the book she had been reading lately, but for some reason, Hiei found himself interested in the book that morning. He stopped and turned to face her, squinting over at the cover of the book. It was littered with foreign writing, but it was not the text that had caught his interest, rather it was the person pictured beneath it. His curiosity peaked, Hiei started towards Yukina, who did not notice his approach until his shadow fell over her, at which point she jumped slightly and gasped before breaking into a smile as her eyes found his.

"Oh, brother, good morning!" she said. "You startled me! I've almost finished reading this book. It's the first book I've read in English, and I managed it in under a week!"

Hiei nodded, though he had not really paid any attention to what she had said as his attention was still focused on the book she held.

"…It's a shame it was so boring…" she added. "I thought it might be an exciting book because it's his life story and he's such a big celebrity, but it was very boring…"

"I recognise that person," Hiei eventually realised out loud, pointing a finger at the cover of the book.

Yukina peered over the top of the pages, smiling as she saw what he was pointing to.

"Of course you do!" she said, looking up at Hiei. "He's the owner of the lodge! He's the man who gave Kazuma his first big job after seeing the tree-house! He's asked Kazuma to build another house for him, that's why we're travelling again soon."

Hiei started to sweat again. He genuinely did recognise the face of the man on the cover of Yukina's book, and it seemed like the only explanation for that could be that he was becoming that other Hiei, since it was something that only that other Hiei would know.

"We're going to America," Yukina added. "We'll be there for some time, so I want to be able to read English too, not just speak it."

Hiei sweated some more. Even that sounded familiar. In fact, a small part of him wanted to tell her that he already knew that she was going to America with Kuwabara.

"Kuwabara is terrible at packing a suitcase, and he gets stopped by security at an airport," Hiei said, the words leaving his mouth as the thought entered his mind.

It had been a worryingly clear thought, though again Hiei had no idea where it had originated from.

"Yes, that's right!" Yukina said, laughing at his words. "Do you remember when we went to France? We missed our flight because Kazuma had to open his suitcase at security! It was so funny! They were very kind at that airport and gave us a refund on our flights because of the inconvenience, but it really was Kazuma's fault for making such a terrible job of packing his suitcase!"

"Why would I know that?"

Yukina's smile dropped. Hiei knew that he should not have asked her that question, but he was completely at a loss to answer it himself, and he was starting to become desperate: surely someone must know what was happening to his mind, and Yukina was just as likely to know as anyone else.

"B-because you remember me telling you about it before?" she offered.

Hiei nodded, though her answer did only seem to confirm that he was becoming that other Hiei: which was something he was not really sure that he wanted. He realised then though that Yukina was not the best person to discuss his concerns with, and so he decided to say no more on the matter. Yukina forced a smile and then went back to reading her book and so Hiei turned away from her, starting back home. On his way there he met Kuwabara and Monzan walking towards him, and it was arguable which one was talking more excitedly.

"Behave yourself today," Hiei warned as he passed them.

"Yes, daddy," Monzan said back.

"I wasn't talking to you, son," Hiei said, smirking to himself as Kuwabara cried out in complaint.

And as he walked on, Hiei wondered when he had started enjoying joking around with Kuwabara. Something very strange was definitely going on, and he was still undecided how he felt about it and how he intended to deal with it: but when he arrived back at the tree-house and found Botan removing the clips from her hair and letting it fall down around her shoulders his mind went blank and he headed straight for her, grabbing her into his arms and burying his face into her hair. She started to say something but her words became scratchy and incoherent as Hiei tore his way through her dress and his fingers reached her thighs. As he moved his hands higher her voice was reduced to an almost pleading moan and she leaned back against him in what he took to be a sign of submission.

He made short work of tearing off the remainder of her clothes and lowering her to the ground, wrapping his arms around her legs and taking one last look at the curious and desirous expression on her face before proceeding to remind her why she felt that way about him.

* * *

Hiei gently lay Botan down on their bed and began removing his own clothes, smirking as he saw her eyes watching his every moment, her face still flushed and her chest still heaving from what he had done to her in the kitchen. She had seemed fully satisfied but he could tell that she was still keen for more, and as he was yet to get his own release, his desire had almost reached the point where he could no longer control himself. He gladly shed the remainder of his clothes and crawled onto the bed, reaching out his hands towards her.

"Hello?"

Hiei froze at the sound of a voice calling into the house from the doorway.

"Oh…" Botan whispered, looking a little disappointed. "You're going back to demon world with Yusuke today?"

"…Fuck…" Hiei muttered as he remembered then that he was meant to be doing just that.

He growled in frustration, but the sound of Yusuke walking into the house and the thought of him seeing Botan naked sobered him slightly, and he reluctantly started to drag himself back from his wife.

"What are you doing?" Botan snapped, grabbing his wrists and pulling him back.

"Going to demon world?" he responded.

"You're going to just leave me like this?" she asked, looking suddenly angry. "You can't do that! Finish what you started!"

"Finish what I…" he began, his face twisting in confusion. "You got what you wanted, I'm the one who needs finishing!"

"I know that! So finish!"

"But what about…?"

Hiei's frown deepened as Botan's pull on his wrists became surprisingly strong.

"Hiei?" Yusuke called through to him. "Come on already!"

"Do you want him to see us like this?" Hiei hissed.

Botan's eyes took on an almost fearsome look and she did something Hiei thought he might never recover from.

"Fuck off Yusuke, we're busy!"

Hiei heard Yusuke mutter out a few complaints, but he moved away again, eventually leaving out the front door.

"There we are!" Botan said sweetly. "That should have bought us half an hour or so."

Hiei stared down at her in disbelief.

"Did you just tell Yusuke to…?" he muttered.

"Oh sweetie, it worked didn't it?" she said, pulling harder at his wrists.

"But…"

"Hiei, shut-up and get back down here. Now."

Hiei let her pull him down then, though inwardly he was still shocked at her outburst. Apparently she really did find it impossible to resist him, he thought.

* * *

Hiei moved to the railings on the porch of his house, looking down at the ground below, where he found Yusuke sat against a tree, his hands behind his head and his eyes closed. Hiei sighed and then leapt down to where he was sat. As Hiei landed, Yusuke opened one eye and looked up at him expectantly.

"Are you done yet?" he asked.

Hiei growled at him and Yusuke grinned, opening his other eye.

"You do know that those walls aren't soundproofed, right?" Yusuke asked, standing up.

Hiei faltered slightly and Yusuke's grin widened.

"And you're at the top of a hill here, so it kinda broadcasts out in every direction," Yusuke continued.

He sighed and shook his head.

"It's your kid I feel sorry for," he said.

"Shut-up," Hiei grumbled.

"That shit could scar a kid for life," Yusuke muttered.

"I said shut-up!" Hiei snapped. "Let's just go to this stupid meeting!"

Yusuke shrugged and started to say something else sarcastic and unnecessary, and so Hiei turned with the intention of leaving without him, only to grunt out a noise of surprise and stumble to a halt when he noticed another figure standing leaning against a nearby tree.

"I thought I might sit in on the meeting today. I hope you don't mind, Hiei."

As Kurama pushed himself off of the tree and turned to Hiei at his last remark, he gave him a glare that directly contradicted the light and easy tone of his voice.

"I don't care what you do," Hiei lied, keeping his face as disinterested as he possibly could: though on the inside he was growing increasingly alarmed by Kurama's presence.

"Then let's go already," Yusuke said. "You've kept us waiting long enough, you randy little bastard…"

Hiei stiffened as he realised that, according to Yusuke's use of the term "kept us waiting", Kurama had also been outside the tree-house the whole time that Yusuke had, and presumably he had also overhead everything that Yusuke had too: and although Hiei had not really cared about Yusuke overhearing what he had been doing that morning, he was quite concerned at the thought of Kurama having heard it. After all, Kurama obviously preferred that other Hiei, and he probably thought that what Hiei was doing was forcing Botan into some form of infidelity.

"It's a lovely morning," Kurama said lightly. "The wait wasn't so bad."

His last words only confirmed Hiei's fears and so he ran off, not wishing to see the look on Kurama's face when he turned his way. He followed the same route Yusuke had taken him the day before, eventually bringing himself back to Yusuke's tower, where he slowed to wait for the others to catch up to him, as he did not wish to join the group he could see waiting for them at the same location as the day before: even though he knew that he should be able to trust them, Hiei still could not think of them as anything other than the enemy soldiers of an opposing army who wanted him dead (which was, of course, what they were in his own reality).

"Damn Hiei, I'm surprised you still had the energy to get here so fast," Yusuke said as he caught up to Hiei.

"Hn," Hiei plainly replied, looking back the way for Kurama's inevitable approach.

"You're a really lucky bastard, you know that?"

Kurama was still some distance away, but at Yusuke's last words, Hiei forgot all about the fox and his concerns with him.

"I'm not lucky!" he snapped.

"Yeah you are," Yusuke replied. "I know you always say you make your own luck and you don't believe in leaving things to chance, but you are lucky to have a woman who actually wants you in the morning."

Hiei could not really answer Yusuke, mostly because he knew that he was right: Hiei did not believe in luck, he did not like to leave things to chance and yet having a woman who was as keen to get her hands on him as he was to get his hands on her first thing in the morning was lucky.

"That is one thing Keiko never does for me," Yusuke said with a sigh. "Even when the school's out for summer and I'm on a day off, and neither of us have to get up for work. She'll lie in bed with me for hours if I want her to, but she gets so damn self-righteous and bitchy if I try anything. She just lies there in those stupid pyjamas that button all the way up to her chin… Damn…"

Hiei frowned slightly as he saw a strange look pass over Yusuke's face, and he found himself wondering if he had just stumbled across another slight flaw in paradise: perhaps Yusuke and Keiko were not so perfectly happy there as he had originally thought they were.

"I love Keiko," Yusuke said. "I always have. But sometimes I just wish she would let go a little. She can be quite uptight sometimes, and she's always trying to keep up her image as the professional woman who's always in control… She'd probably enjoy herself a lot more if she would just relax and give it up some of the time…"

Hiei snorted before he could stop himself, and then felt almost relieved when Kurama joined them, as it saved him from having to explain himself to Yusuke, who was glaring at him angrily for his outburst. There was, of course, nothing funny about what Yusuke had just said: but for some strange reason, the irony of it, combined with insufficient sleep and too much caffeine and pain made Hiei want to laugh. After all, in his own reality, Keiko had long ago given up maintaining "her image as the professional woman who's always in control", and she was anything but enjoying herself for it.

"Why don't you go ahead and start the meeting, and we'll join you shortly," Kurama said to Yusuke.

Hiei tensed as Kurama dropped a hand onto his shoulder and gripped into him a little too tightly.

"Um, okay…" Yusuke said slowly, his eyes on Kurama's hand. "Sure…"

He paused for several seconds, his eyes still on Kurama's hand, before he turned and started off across the yard. Once he was comfortably out of earshot Kurama turned to Hiei.

"I trust you've had time to watch the video I gave you last night," he said. "And I see that you're still carrying it on you."

"I couldn't exactly leave it lying around the house," Hiei sarcastically replied. "Botan would have known what it was instantly."

"Yes, well, I need to return it before it's missed," Kurama said.

"Fine," Hiei said, retrieving the video from his shirt.

Kurama accepted the video and quickly concealed it beneath his clothes with the ease of a seasoned larcenist.

"And you did watch it?" he asked quietly.

"Many times," Hiei replied, smirking slightly as his favourite scenes from the video replayed in his mind.

"Good," Kurama said. "Now before you return home I have a question for you: the last time you were here you told me that in your reality I had returned to demon world and taken my full demon form once more, so then what became of this body, the body of Shuichi?"

"He stayed behind in the living world," Hiei replied, feeling a little surprised and confused by Kurama's question. "He told his mother about you and all your adventures and she had him committed to an insane asylum because she thought he was crazy."

"I see," Kurama said, nodding slowly. "Have you ever spoken to him?"

Hiei eyed Kurama over, wanting to ask him why he was so interested in Shuichi all of a sudden: but as he saw that Kurama appeared to have eased off from trying to chase him out of paradise, he decided not to push the matter and simply to go along with answering Kurama's questions.

"Yes," he said. "I visited him in the hospital. Twice. The first time I went because his mother found me and made me go."

"How is my mother is your reality?" Kurama asked. "I've always been very close to her, and when you told me that I had returned to demon world permanently in your reality I wondered how it had affected her."

Hiei shrugged. He did not really know or care what had become of Shuichi's mother. She was alive, she was still moving around on her own and she had seemed mentally stable and coherent the day she had taken him to visit Shuichi, so he had to assume that she was alright.

"She seems fine," he said. "I suppose she wishes that Shuichi wasn't in that hospital, but otherwise she's just the same as she always was."

"What about my stepfather?" Kurama asked.

"Who?" Hiei responded.

"My stepfather? My mother's husband?"

"I don't know, I didn't see him."

"Really?"

Hiei felt that Kurama was almost accusing him of lying, which was completely unwarranted, as he had just been completely honest with him. He had not seen Shuichi's stepfather and so he had no clue what had become of him. Kurama was being unreasonable, since Hiei genuinely was ignorant to the facts about Shuichi's stepfather in the norm reality.

Or maybe not.

"Fuck," Hiei muttered under his breath.

"I didn't think it would be good," Kurama said, sounding far too calm and knowing for Hiei's liking. "Though obviously it's not important to you, since it took you so long to remember…"

"I never saw him, it was just something that Shuichi said to me!" Hiei snapped angrily. "I forgot about it until now because it was just something that he said when we were comparing this reality to our own reality!"

"What did he say?" Kurama pressed.

"He said that he worries about his mother because his stepfather left her because he couldn't handle what had become of Shuichi and the fact that his mother became depressed after he was hospitalised. He said he worried about her being on her own."

Kurama nodded and finally removed his hand from Hiei's shoulder.

"It fascinates me that so much about my life and the life of those around me depends on you, Hiei," he said.

"It's not my fault that other reality turned out wrong!" Hiei said defensively: though he knew it was a lie.

"Perhaps not entirely," Kurama said, much to his surprise. "You couldn't have known that overlooking Botan would have had such an impact on all of our lives over time. And I suppose if Mukuro were to send me to another reality, I might find one even worse than the one you came from: after all, our lives are all intertwined, and it only takes one thread to come loose for the whole tapestry to fall apart."

"Very poetic," Hiei said sarcastically.

"I was trying to offer you some advice you may find useful in your own dimension," Kurama flatly replied. "Now let's not leave the others waiting."

Hiei rolled his eyes and then followed Kurama up to the balcony where Yusuke and his men were waiting to reconvene the meeting from the day before. When they arrived they found the same group from the day before, all sat on the ground except for Yusuke.

"Okay, let's try this again," Yusuke said as they joined him. "What are we going to do about that valley? I think we should take a vote, first off. All those in favour of blasting it?"

Yusuke held up his hand, as did most of the rest of his men.

"And those against blasting it?" he asked.

Hiei raised his hand, and he was surprised to see that Kurama did too, along with three of Yusuke's men.

"Okay, it's pretty much fifty-fifty then," Yusuke said with a sigh. "I guess that means we've got to talk it out…"

Yusuke sat down on the ground in the partial circle the others were sat in and Hiei and Kurama sat down with him. Hiei found himself between Yusuke and Kurama, and he could not decide if he felt more secure next to them or not: he still could not shake the idea that everyone around him wanted him dead, and he supposed that was a part of the norm reality that would never truly leave him no matter what he did or how long he stayed in paradise.

"Well the way I see it is this: we've lost four merchants in the last two months through ambushes from the valley," Yusuke began. "I don't care about what was stolen, but I don't like needless slaughtering like that, especially not on a road that ought to safe for everyone to use. So I think that–"

Yusuke stopped short as the two guards at the gates of his tower began yelling frantically. He looked back over his shoulder with a frown and eventually Hiei and Kurama looked back too. From their vantage point it was difficult to tell exactly what had happened, but the guards seemed to be trying to catch something down at their feet.

"Probably just another snake," Yusuke concluded, turning back to the others.

"They seem quite riled, are you sure?" Kurama asked him.

Yusuke shrugged.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure they can handle it," he said.

"Maybe it's someone from the valley coming to protest this meeting," one of his men suggested.

"How would they know we're having this meeting?" another asked him.

The others all began arguing the point, but Hiei was still looking down at the yard below and too distracted by the ensuing ruckus there to care. He could sense what was really happening down there, but what he was sensing seemed ridiculous, and so he was trying to visually confirm or refute it. With the clouds of dust the guards and their apparent intruder were kicking up, it was almost impossible to clearly see anything. He could barely make out the guards growing increasingly confused and eventually one of them falling over and the intruder darting away from them. Hiei grew increasingly anxious when a line of dust clouds shot across the yard towards the stairs leading to the balcony he was sat on, and as the dust began to settle and sounds of an approach began to reach his ears, Hiei gave up trying to deny what was happening, as absurd and inexplicable as it seemed.

Monzan had just appeared in demon world.

"Hey, what the hell is he doing here?" Yusuke asked, looking back over his shoulder as the familiar shape of the spiky-haired boy began to become clearer, scaling the steps towards them. "Isn't he supposed to be in school right now?"

"I have a bad feeling about this," Kurama muttered.

Hiei doubted that Kurama could be feeling as bad as he did right then: something was clearly amiss as it made no sense that Monzan would run away from kindergarten and enter demon world, least of all that he should come to Yusuke's tower. As he drew nearer Hiei started to feel panicked, torn between anger and fear as he saw that the boy looked extremely distressed and almost wild. He heard voices muttering questions around him but he ignored them all, swivelling around to face the steps and barely managing to open his arms in time to catch Monzan as he launched himself at him.

On instinct Hiei closed his arms around his son, holding onto him as he cried into his shoulder and started wailing out indecipherable nonsense. The boy was still dressed as he had been when he had left for kindergarten that morning, but his bandana was absent and he had been running so fast and hard that he had run through the soles of his shoes and his feet were scratched and swollen.

"What the hell happened to him?" Yusuke asked. "Was it those kids at the kindergarten? He's usually pretty tough against humans, one of them must have hit him with a chair to leave a mark like that!"

Hiei tensed, wondering what Yusuke was referring to.

"And look at this," Kurama said, pointing at something over Hiei's shoulder. "A wound like that could only have been caused by a talisman. This is a very bad sign."

Hiei had heard enough. He forgot his fears and simply became angry. He grabbed Monzan's shoulders and wrenched him back, holding him at arm's length and eying him over carefully. His bottom lip was burst open and one side of his mouth was turning blue and swelling and the right sleeve of his sweater was torn off, and he did, as Kurama had already pointed out, clearly have a wound from a talisman card.

"Who did this to you?" Hiei asked him in a low voice.

Monzan babbled out a bunch of incoherent syllables before sobbing into his hands.

"It must have been somebody seriously strong," Yusuke whispered to Hiei. "Even though he's like that now, he just got past my guards."

"Who did this to you, boy?" Hiei demanded, his anger only rising at Yusuke's words.

"There's a bad man there!" Monzan replied, before once more dissolving into talking nonsense.

"There?" Hiei pressed. "Where? At your kindergarten?"

"No," Monzan moaned. "I was outside playing and I used my special eye to look for mommy, she said I'm not supposed to, but you said I had to look after her when you go to demon world so I was looking for her and I saw her crying and there was a bad man there so I went to fight him but I couldn't get there because there were two other bad men in the forest and they were too strong so you have to come home and make the bad man stop making mommy cry!"

Hiei felt his mind go blank and, for the first time in a long time, he was filled with an uncontrollable blood lust. Whoever had done this to his son and was hurting his wife was going to die very painfully. He put his arms around Monzan, pulling him flush against his chest and then rose to his feet, only pausing when Kurama grabbed a handful of the back of his shirt.

"Tread carefully, Hiei," he said. "This is a time for diplomacy, not bloodshed."

"Fuck diplomacy, it never achieves anything," Hiei growled, before jerking his shoulder forwards and tugging his shirt free of Kurama's hold.

He tightened his hold of Monzan and then took off, running as fast and hard as he could, his mind devoid of all but one thought as he travelled back home: how he was going to make whoever had dared do this suffer.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** The noose is getting tighter for Hiei as someone else has discovered his little secret, and this time it's not someone who intends to be discreet about it. Hiei learns something significant about his second son and the issue of "that other Hiei" is starting to consume his every thought to the point of irrationality. **Chapter 30 – Conflicting Loyalties**


	30. Conflicting Loyalties

**Recap:** Hiei watched the video of Hitoshi's anti-war speech but was unimpressed, he had several spooky déjà vu experiences that left him sure that he was inheriting that other Hiei's memories (or else becoming that other Hiei) and he returned to demon world to attend the reconvened meeting he had fled the day before, only to have it interrupted by a very distraught Monzan, who reported that Botan was in trouble.

* * *

 **Chapter 30: Conflicting Loyalties**

As he arrived back in the living world, Hiei felt a small amount of consolation from the fact that Monzan had finally stopped crying. He was clinging onto Hiei's shoulder very tightly, but his body had relaxed a little and he felt calmer, which in turn was helping to take some of the edge off of Hiei's burning need for vengeance. As he regained a little of his senses, Hiei realised that he ought to have employed the same initial tactic as his son: he should have used his jagan eye to check on Botan and find out exactly what was happening. As it was, all his energy was currently devoted to running and holding onto Monzan and so he was entering the situation blindly. He was expecting trouble, and, by the nature of the wound on Monzan's arm, he was not expecting it to be human, and when he started to hear a verbal battle on the approach to his house he began to lose the small amount of calm he had been gaining.

Through the trees ahead of him, Kuwabara was surrounded by four bodies, his face red and his right hand poised to summon his spirit sword. He was alternating between yelling insults and wailing out pleas for something, and the sight of paradise Kuwabara so unsettled was certainly not a pleasant or in any way reassuring one for Hiei.

But, worst of all was the identity of the four surrounding Kuwabara and holding him in place under threat of attack: they were all fully uniformed officers of the spirit world Special Defence Force.

One of them turned and glanced in Hiei's general direction, but he was too fast for them to make out, and so he managed to slip past them, leaping up into the trees to his house. The front door of the house was hanging open – quite literally, as the bottom hinge had come loose along with a shard of wood from the doorframe, as if someone had kicked open the door by force – and the floor inside the house was littered with muddy boot-prints, again only angering Hiei further. He quickly moved to the source of the voice he could hear arguing in the living room, and he was barely surprised at the sight that greeted him.

Despite the amount of noise being generated in that one room, there were only four people there. At one side of the room Yukina was barely standing, her arms tightly wound around Botan, who seemed to be slouched almost fully against her, sweating and looking barely conscious, and at the other side of the room stood Koenma – in his adult form, of course – and that neurotic, bushy-haired wild woman from spirit world.

"That's him," the crazy woman said, pointing at Hiei. "That's the monstrosity that does not belong!"

Koenma gave Hiei a hard look before turning to Botan.

"And there we have it," he said, as though he had just won some sort of argument.

"What the fuck is going on in here?" Hiei demanded.

"Why don't you tell us, Hiei?" Koenma asked, turning to face him again. "Assuming that is your real name, of course…"

"What?" Hiei roared.

"I'm here on official spirit world business," Koenma replied. "I'm investigating a disturbance reported in the tides of fate that seem to be originating from this house."

Hiei swallowed hard, the horrible realisation dawning on him that, just as had happened when he had prolonged his stay in the near miss reality, that irksome guardian of fate had figured out that he was a fake and reported him to the powers that be in spirit world. Now he had more than just Kurama and Mukuro to worry about, and on top of that, apparently Koenma had told Botan exactly what his servant had discovered, which only complicated matters further, because that now meant that Botan knew the truth too.

"You're a bad man!" Monzan yelled suddenly, turning his head to glare at Koenma. "You hurt my mommy, I'll kill you!"

Hiei tightened his hold on Monzan to stop him from following through with his threat, which he apparently did intend to see through as his energy flared and he began trying to wriggle out of Hiei's arms. Botan turned to him then, her eyes dull and unfocussed. She looked like she was in incredible pain, though there was no obvious sign of her having suffered any mistreatment. She did not appear to even recognise them, and Hiei began to worry that Koenma – or more likely one of his Special Defence Force soldiers – had done something to her mind to make her compliant to their demands.

"So that's your son," Koenma said, shifting his eyes to Botan. "I see he's just like his father already. He's even had a jagan eye implanted even though he's still in diapers."

"No, you don't understand!" Yukina wailed. "Don't say such mean things, Mister Koenma! Monzan's jagan eye is genetic, he was born with it! He inherited it from my brother! Hiei's jagan implant was a complete genetic transformation, and he passed that gene on to his son! And Monzan doesn't wear diapers, he's four years old!"

Hiei vaguely heard what Yukina was saying and he found it vaguely interesting to listen to: he had never really considered that he had the ability to pass on his third eye genetically before, but he supposed that, until his first visit to the paradise reality, he had never considered passing on anything genetically before. Botan was still looking at Monzan and slowly her eyes were starting to change, a look of hardened determination taking form on her face.

"Why is my baby hurt?" she asked quietly.

Hiei looked down at Monzan, his eyes wandering over the marks on his face and arm.

"Who hurt my baby?" Botan asked, turning to Koenma.

"The child is a demon in the living world," Koenma calmly answered her. "The SDF are trained to eradicate all demons in the living world."

"He's my baby," Botan growled back. "He's just a child, and he would never lay a finger on anyone unprovoked! He wouldn't fight your officers, hurting a child like that is beyond cruel!"

"Well, actually, he was fighting my officers," Koenma replied. "He appeared from nowhere and accused them of trying to hurt you and then started attacking. Now he may well be a child, and he may well be your child, but he was attacking and he appears to be at least a lower B class demon, and that sort of threat is not to be ignored."

"My son is A class, you ignorant bastard!"

Everyone in the room – including Hiei – flinched slightly at Botan's sudden and violent outburst. It had sounded especially fearsome as her voice was slightly broken as though she had already yelled herself hoarse. And the words had barely left her mouth before the anger vanished from her face and her eyes glazed over again and she let out a faint, pained cry and slumped more heavily against Yukina, who stumbled slightly but managed to hold her up.

"What are you doing to her?" Hiei demanded, taking a step forwards.

"Me?" Koenma asked him, touching a hand to his chest. "I'm not doing anything, Hiei. Your wife's in pain right now because of you. That's what happens when a human woman carries a demon child: she suffers."

"That's a very mean thing to say, Mister Koenma," Yukina said sternly. "And it's not true! Botan isn't suffering because she's carrying a demon child, she's suffering because the baby is scared, because it can sense that you have ill will towards this family. This is your fault, you shouldn't have come here and said all of those terrible things."

"With all due respect Yukina, you don't understand, and you shouldn't get involved in this," Koenma told her.

"Don't talk to my sister like that, you condescending bastard," Hiei warned him.

"Let me kill him," Monzan said, trying to struggle free of Hiei's arms again.

"No Monzan, you mustn't!" Yukina warned. "You must never kill anyone is this world, or you might be put in prison! And your mommy and daddy would be in trouble too!"

Koenma snorted and rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath, apparently thinking that nobody would notice.

"Something funny, Koenma?" Hiei sneered. "Does Botan's misery amuse you?"

Hiei faltered slightly as he realised that he had heard those words somewhere before. He glanced at the guardian of fate and saw her face change slightly in a flicker of acknowledgement that she too seemed to recognise what he had just said. In the pause before Koenma answered him, Hiei had just enough time to remember where he had heard that question before: Koenma had asked it of him in the norm reality after he had let Botan die and he was trying to make Hiei apologise for it.

How ironic that it had been true of Hiei in his own reality back then and now it seemed to be true of Koenma in paradise.

"You called the boy Monzan?" Koenma asked.

"Yes we did," Hiei replied. "Because he has a future as a noble warrior, and the name passes on strength, honour and luck."

"I thought you didn't believe in luck, Hiei," Koenma said.

It was typical, Hiei thought, that the petulant prince would pick up on the one slight inconsistency in his response. He had only been quoting what Botan had told him about the name, but thinking about it now he supposed that it was ridiculous to think that it was a lucky name, since there was no such thing.

"Though you've certainly had plenty of it in your life…" Koenma added quietly.

"Stop it," Botan groaned. "You can't come in here, to my home, and insult my family like that!"

"I have good reason to be here," he answered her.

"No you don't!" she argued. "I haven't seen you in eight years! We used to be friends! Where have you been all this time? You never visit any of us and you knew I had a son, but you never came to see him!"

"You never came back to spirit world," he pointed out.

"Yes, because you banned my husband from visiting spirit world, remember?" she retaliated.

"Yes, I banned him, but not you or your son."

"I wouldn't go without my husband. Unless you lift the ban on Hiei, I won't ever go back there. And even if I did, how would I know that I would be safe? You just had half of the SDF attack my baby!"

"You're always welcome in spirit world and I would always be glad to see you."

"Glad to see me? You had plenty of reasons to come and see me over the last eight years – my wedding, the birth of my first child – but you never came near until now, and you're only here now because of a bad thing! You found out about a crime that you think you can pin on my husband, and you're here in an instant! That's just vindictive!"

"Try to stay calm, Botan!" Yukina pleaded. "Don't let him upset you and the baby!"

"I've had enough of this," Hiei growled.

"Me too," Koenma said. "Botan, here is the warrant for Hiei's arrest and a communication mirror. When you change your mind – which I hope you will do soon – call me and I will send out the SDF to action that warrant and end this mess."

Botan took the communication device from him and closed her fist around it, straining until it cracked apart in her hand. She then opened her hand and let it drop to the ground before snatching the warrant from Koenma and tearing it up and then throwing the pieces in his face.

"Don't you dare ever come round here again making wild accusations against my husband like that, understand?" she warned him.

"These are not wild accusations, Botan," Koenma said with a sigh. "I have genuine reason to believe that the soul inside Hiei's body right now is not the same one you know. I believe he is an imposter, and I'm only doing my duty by investigating that."

"I think you should stop saying those horrible things, Mister Koenma," Yukina said. "Botan has listened to everything you had to say and I think you should leave now."

Botan winced and her legs shivered and again Yukina had to tighten her hold to keep her upright.

"I didn't come here to cause hurt," Koenma said calmly.

"Liar," Hiei growled.

"And since it seems that I am doing that," Koenma continued, stealing a stern glance at Hiei. "I will leave. But first just let me ask you one thing, Hiei."

"Don't question him," Botan said faintly. "Just… Go, please."

"If he has nothing to hide, he'll answer one question, there's no harm in that, right?" Koenma said. "Tell me Hiei, since you are such a devoted husband and father, what did you do on Monzan's last birthday? What sort of party did you have?"

"You don't even know the answer to that question yourself!" Botan snapped at him. "How dare you ask that question when you never even acknowledged Monzan's birth?"

"Why don't you just let Hiei answer me? Hiei?"

Hiei felt a moment of cold panic: he had no idea what sort of party had been thrown for Monzan's last birthday: he did not even know when Monzan's birthday was. That other Hiei probably knew, the sneaky bastard that he was. And he had probably been there, too, Hiei thought bitterly. Realising that he was going to have to answer something, Hiei said the only thing that he could under the circumstances.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "I wasn't there."

Koenma took on a smug look, but, to Hiei's surprise, so did Botan.

"Ha!" she said suddenly. "You see? You and your stupid questions!"

Koenma looked as confused as Hiei felt, but Hiei made an effort to keep his feelings from showing.

"Wh-what?" Koenma asked, glancing back and forth between Hiei and Botan.

"Hiei wasn't at Monzan's birthday party, actually," Botan explained. "He was in demon world. I never told him what sort of party it was, so he's telling the truth he doesn't know and he wasn't there. So there!"

"But… An imposter wouldn't have been there either!"

"First of all, an imposter would have made something up. Secondly, you said this imposter has been here for several weeks: Monzan's birthday was only two weeks ago – which you would know if you bothered to show an interest in me and my family any more – and so the imposter would have been here at that time, so that wasn't even a good question to ask!"

"I really do think that you should leave now, Mister Koenma," Yukina added.

"You've insulted my husband enough today," Botan said to Koenma. "Now get out of my house."

Koenma paused, looking slightly remorseful as he looked over at Botan.

"Can I kill him now, daddy?" Monzan asked Hiei.

Hiei opened his mouth to tell the boy to shut-up but stopped short when Koenma spoke.

"Well I can see that the boy does you proud," he said sarcastically. "He's certainly turning into another noble and honourable warrior."

Hiei's anger started to rise again and he felt Monzan's energy rising too.

"Please may I kill him now?" Monzan asked in his pouty, sulky, "please give me another cake" voice.

"Leave now," Hiei said to Koenma. "Or I might just let the boy have his wish."

Koenma arched his eyebrows in an almost mocking way, and apparently his action angered Monzan even more than it angered Hiei, as suddenly the air in the room changed and even Hiei was taken aback by the amount of power radiating off of the boy. He started to smile, though as his face contorted it looked more like an upward sneer, and he raised one upturned palm in front of his face, black flames swirling around his fingers and gathering into a ball in the air above his hand.

"Okay, we're going," Koenma said, nodding at the guardian of fate.

"You're in great danger with this one," she said to Botan as Koenma started to leave.

"Get out of here," Botan answered her. "I'm just as angry and disappointed with you over this."

The guardian of fate looked almost despaired but followed after Koenma regardless, being sure to give Hiei and Monzan a wide berth upon her exit. Once they were out of sight Hiei placed Monzan down on the ground.

"Stay here," he said sternly before he released him.

"Mommy would have let me kill him," he muttered under his breath.

"No, mommy would not have let you kill him, Monzan!" Botan said sternly.

"Could you help me please, brother?" Yukina said.

Hiei nodded, moving over to Botan's other side and lifting her arm around his shoulders before securing an arm around her waist. Yukina slid from Botan's side and her weight jerked against Hiei's arm. He was surprised at just how heavily she was leaning on him, and as Yukina stepped away from them he saw her wince and touch a hand to her shoulder: apparently she had been almost carrying Botan's entire weight for some time.

Hiei put his other arm around Botan's legs and carefully lifted her, carrying her over to the couch before setting her down there. She grabbed at the back of the couch and held herself up, pulling herself around into a sitting position and leaning back into the cushions with a sigh. She was sweating profusely and clearly had been for a long time as her hair was damp and stringy about her face. She was slightly paler than usual and she was shaking and occasionally twitching.

"Come here sweetie," she said breathlessly, holding out her arms.

Hiei started towards her but was cut off by Monzan throwing himself at her. Hiei was a little disappointed when he saw that she had been referring to Monzan as she gladly took him into her arms and started kissing at the top of his head.

"I'm so sorry sweetie," she whispered to him.

"It's not your fault, Botan!" Yukina said.

"I don't even understand what… What happened…" Botan said. "I was just doing some dusting and then someone kicked down my front door… And then Koenma was here, and… And then I heard Yukina and Kuwabara arguing outside with those SDF soldiers… And then Yukina was in here… And then I heard Monzan crying… And then you showed up…"

She met Hiei's eyes then, looking both confused and grateful.

"How did you… What did…" she began. "I mean, I thought you were in demon world and Monzan was at kindergarten…?"

Monzan leaned back from her and looked up at her with wide, worried eyes, his guilt evident on his features.

"That was my fault," Hiei interjected. "I asked Monzan to check on you today because I had a feeling that something bad might happen. He was closer to you than I was so I asked him to go to you, and when he couldn't get past those SDF bastards he asked me for help. Don't be angry with him, he was just trying to protect you, and that's how it should be."

Botan turned to Hiei and he saw Monzan secretly smiling at him. He was not really sure if Botan would have been angry if she had known the truth, but he did remember that, back in demon world, Monzan had said that Botan had told him not to use his jagan eye, and he also remembered that Botan put the bandana on him every morning and gave him a lecture on not removing it under any circumstances, and he did not want her to find out that the boy had defied her wishes.

"I'm so sorry," she said, reaching out a hand to him.

Hiei sat down next to her and she slid her hand up the side of his face.

"I had no idea Koenma was going to do this," she said. "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

"It's not your fault, stop apologising," he replied.

"Hey, is everybody okay in here?" Kuwabara asked, stumbling into the room.

"We're fine now," Yukina answered him.

"Thank God you got here when you did, Hiei!" Kuwabara said to Hiei. "I don't know what's wrong with those SDF guys! The first time we met them they tried to kill Urameshi and today I caught them attacking Mon-Mon!"

"I tried to make them stop," Yukina said.

"And then they turned on Yukina!" Kuwabara added.

"I'm a demon in the living world, they've been trained to kill demons in the living world," Yukina said sadly. "Mister Koenma told us that."

"But you and Mon-Mon have never hurt anyone!" Kuwabara said. "They were just picking on you because you weren't strong enough to fight back, and that's unforgiveable!"

"It was awful."

"What did they want, anyway?"

"Koenma thinks Hiei has been possessed by another soul," Botan said flatly. "He came here to have him arrested and exorcised."

"That's just stupid!" Kuwabara argued. "Besides, isn't it impossible for Hiei to be possessed? I mean, you're already possessed, right Hiei? By the dragon, I mean?"

Hiei's face dropped and he gave Kuwabara a very flat look that he hoped made him feel as stupid as he had just sounded.

"Oh, here, let me heal your wounds, Mon-Mon!" Yukina said, moving over to Monzan.

"No!" he said stubbornly, gripping his hands into Botan's clothes and holding himself in place.

Yukina retracted her hands in surprise, but Kuwabara nodded, apparently understanding something that nobody else in the room seemed to.

"Leave him be, Yukina," he said, touching a hand to her shoulder. "He doesn't mind bearing those wounds because he got them protecting his mom."

Hiei started to pull a face at Kuwabara for being ridiculous, but stopped when he saw that Monzan was nodding in agreement.

"Oh, that's so sweet!" Yukina said, clasping her hands together and smiling at Monzan. "He's growing up to be a man of honour!"

Hiei fought the urge to smirk smugly like a simpleton, trying to remind himself that it was completely inappropriate to let his own pride in his son overtake him at such a moment.

"I'm exhausted," Botan said, wiping a hand at her face. "I need to lie down."

Hiei turned to her, preparing himself to tell her that he would carry her to bed, but forgetting the idea when he saw that there were tears mingled with the sweat on her face.

"Are you alright now, Botan?" Yukina asked her.

Botan shook her head.

"It still hurts," she sighed quietly. "It was so extreme that for a while that I was sure I was going to…"

She suddenly looked directly at Hiei, looking slightly guilty as she did so.

"But I'm fine now," she lied. "Just a little bit sore and very tired."

"Well we'll take Monzan today," Yukina offered. "I'll call the kindergarten and let them know he won't be back today, and he can stay with us at the temple. What do you say, Mon-Mon? Do you want to stay with your uncle and aunty today?"

Monzan looked up at her with an unreadable expression on his face.

"We can bake some cakes!" she offered.

He looked thoughtful for a moment but the fact that he had not started yelling and running out of the house told Hiei that the boy was clearly looking for a polite way to say no.

"Leave him here," Hiei said. "He's fine. Let him stay with us."

Yukina nodded and gave him a small smile.

"Hey, yo!" a voice called through the house from the front door.

"In here, Urameshi!" Kuwabara called back.

A few seconds later Yusuke and Kurama entered the room, the former looking confused and the latter looking very sternly in Hiei's direction.

"We just had a run-in with Koenma and his band of merry men," Yusuke said. "And they weren't exactly happy."

"Please…" Botan said through a sigh. "I really appreciate that everyone has rallied around us, but please… I'm so tired now, please let me lie down… We can talk about this later."

"Of course," Yukina said. "I'll talk to Monzan's kindergarten teacher, so don't worry about that."

"Well hey, if you need anything, let us know," Yusuke offered.

"We're fine," Hiei assured him.

"I'm sure you are, Hiei," Kurama muttered.

Hiei turned to glare at him but he had already turned away and was leaving the room again. Yusuke nodded at him before he left and Kuwabara and Yukina gave a small wave before leaving. Hiei watched them all go out the front door, and again he heard something that seemed unreasonably ironic.

"I can't believe the SDF would have a problem with you, Yukina," Kuwabara said. "You've never hurt anyone. You just use your powers to heal. You're a nicer person than most humans and even most spirits."

"They were just doing their job, Kazuma," Yukina answered him. "They don't discriminate between "good" and "bad" demons, they just see all demons as a threat."

"But what if they'd hurt you? I don't think I could control myself if they'd done something awful to you, my love."

"Well they didn't hurt me, so don't worry about it. As long as we're all together, nothing that terrible would ever happen."

The front door closed and Hiei watched it for a few seconds, his mind reeling, before slowly turning back to Botan. She was suddenly squeezing Monzan in an embrace that was probably too much even for a kid who liked to be hugged, and she was quietly sobbing. It was quite a pitiful sight and not helped by the wounds Monzan bore and Botan's generally worn out appearance. Hiei felt a little helpless, part of him getting frustrated knowing that all the pain everyone had just suffered was because of him, part of him was simply enraged because he knew that he could not retaliate the way he wanted to against Koenma or anyone from spirit world because, as Yukina had said, it would only land him in prison and cause more problems for his family and another part of him simply felt lost: Mukuro's knowledge of his true identity made demon world a dangerous place to be, Koenma's knowledge of his true identity meant spirit world would be watching him and Kurama's knowledge of his true identity meant that he was not safe anywhere.

"Fuck," he sighed, leaning over and putting his arms around Botan and Monzan.

He held them against him and started to feel a little more sensible and relaxed. There was something quite unusual going on inside his head and he was trying to ignore it, but it was gradually becoming more persistent. Whatever it was, it had allowed him to keep an alarming amount of control over his actions when he had arrived at the tree-house and found Botan suffering and Koenma to be the cause of it. He wondered if it was that other Hiei – since he seemed like the sort of prick who would stay calm and talk things out when faced with a threat from spirit world – and he wondered if this was just another sign that he was assimilating to the paradise reality.

And in that moment, Hiei realised something that made him feel even more unsure and even more insane: although he was happy to gain some of that other Hiei's memories and thoughts, he did not want to actually become that other Hiei.

"I can't believe they attacked my baby…" Botan whispered, bringing Hiei's attention back to the situation at hand.

"They're bastards with no sense of honour," Hiei answered her.

"But he's just a child!" she sobbed. "And he's such a good boy, he would never hurt anyone! He's so loving and kind and gentle, and today he was only trying to defend his family, they had no right to react so violently towards him!"

"I know," Hiei said. "But that's just the way of things. It always has been. Part of the function of spirit world is to keep powerful demons out of the living world, and as long as we live here, they will always see us as a threat."

"But we're not a threat to anyone or anything. And I worked for spirit world for so long, don't I deserve a bit of leeway? We didn't do anything wrong!"

"It doesn't always have to be this way. If there was a better understanding between the leaders of demon world and the leaders of spirit world, we could all enjoy a more harmonious and synchronised existence across the three worlds: demon, spirit and human. Old prejudices need to be laid aside, and bridges need to be built to strengthen alliances and open up communication. The majority of problems between our worlds arise from simple ignorance of the facts and inherited fear – after all, nothing is more terrifying than the depths of our own imaginations, and in the lack of solid understanding, our imaginations can get the better of us and hype the mania to new and unreasonable heights. This in turn only – wait, what the fuck am I talking about?"

Hiei sat back slightly, his face contorted in confusion. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the speech he had been giving was continuing, and it sounded quite enlightened and progressive: but when had his brain started generating enlightened and progressive thoughts, least of all an ability to put them into words?

"You have such a beautiful soul, Hiei," Botan said to him. "You're so much more intelligent than you give yourself credit for. I know you'll make a great leader when we move to demon world and you take over Mukuro's kingdom."

"Control of demon world used to just be about raw physical strength," he said faintly.

"You know you've got that too, sweetie," she said. "And as much as I love talking about your brilliance and having you here with me, I'm going to have to ask you to help me to bed and then to leave me alone."

Hiei turned to her in alarm, at first misinterpreting her words to mean that she wanted him to leave her indefinitely.

"Your son or daughter has been fighting inside of me for the last half hour at least," she added. "Monzan was quite a sensitive baby, and he often reacted to changes in my emotions, but this one is something else. Monzan never kicked me this hard, not even at the end of my pregnancy when he was a fully grown baby. I'm exhausted and I need to lie down to recover my strength and to try to make this baby relax again."

Hiei nodded, though the only part of what Botan had said that he understood was the part about her wanting to lie down: she did look exhausted, after all. The rest of what she had said, however, might as well have been spoken in another language for all he had understood of it. Babies, pregnancies and emotional links were all things he had never thought about before his first visit to paradise, and he realised that, even though he had now started to think about them, he still did not really understand or know that much about them.

"I can feel it too," Monzan said.

Hiei quirked an eyebrow at the boy, watching in mild fascination as he pressed his hands against Botan's stomach.

"It's not as bad as it was ten minutes ago," Botan said, grabbing one of Hiei's hands and pressing it against her stomach by Monzan's hands.

Hiei started to ask her how she even knew what the baby was thinking, since she was clearly some months away from delivery yet, but he fell silent when he felt something poke at the underside of his hand.

"What was that?" he asked.

He looked at Botan expectantly and found her giving him the sort of look she usually reserved for Yusuke when he had said something particularly stupid. And a glance at Monzan showed that he was wearing exactly the same expression.

"That would be your baby moving about inside of me, dear," Botan said, a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

"But it's so small!" Hiei argued.

"Babies generally are kicking in a way that can be felt on the outside at this stage of a pregnancy," she told him.

"Really?"

"Yes, really! Oh Hiei, you can be quite naïve sometimes. Look, you can even see it if you watch carefully enough."

Botan pushed aside Hiei's and Monzan's hands and then lifted up her top, exposing her swollen belly. She slouched back slightly further and pointed at the lower part of her abdomen.

"Just watch," she said.

"I see it!" Monzan said almost immediately.

Hiei could not stop his eyes from widening in surprise as he clearly saw a twitching movement and slight distortion of Botan's skin.

"How did it get down there?" he asked, touching both his hands to the point where he had seen the movement.

"Hiei, surely I don't need to tell you how your baby got inside me…" Botan sighed.

Hiei ignored her, marvelling at the occasional pokes he could feel from her stomach. Concentrating a little harder, he could feel that the baby was quite distressed, something that he supposed Botan was only guessing at by its currently quite violent and erratic movements. He could feel a few other things that he knew Botan definitely would not, like the fact that the baby was a boy, demon, and that he had already developed a jagan eye of his own. Hiei again found himself slightly amazed that his jagan eye had been passed down to both of his sons: he had of course always known that Shigure was the most skilled surgeon in demon world, but he had not realised that his operations were so complete as to create a total genetic transformation that could be inherited by any children. And, just as surprisingly, the jagan eye Monzan had inherited was already quite functional and he seemed to understand how to use it almost instinctively, as he had used it that morning to discover Botan's troubles with Koenma and he had obviously used it to seek out Hiei in demon world.

But this baby was different from Monzan. Monzan was quite strong physically, he was fast, agile and almost naturally skilled with a sword, and he had demonstrated that morning that he had already learnt to summon the darkness flame: but the baby inside of Botan was not the same. He had a strong demonic aura already, but it was more focused than Monzan's was. Monzan was quite skilled all round, but the baby seemed to have significantly weaker physical powers, and most of his strength was concentrated around his jagan eye. He was already quite aware of things beyond the womb, and Hiei almost felt that he could communicate with the boy already. In perhaps another few weeks of growth, he believed that it might be possible to reach the boy's mind. He was very alert and very sensitive, and presumably that was why he was causing Botan so much trouble right then. She had said that Monzan had been quite aware of her emotions but not so much so as this baby was, and what Hiei was feeling only confirmed that: this baby was literally absorbing and then acting out Botan's feelings.

"This child is very–"

"Don't you dare tell me, Hiei!"

Hiei pulled a face at Botan, but she suddenly looked quite stern, and he felt a particularly hard poke at the underside of his fingers as again the baby reacted to her change in emotion.

"I don't want to know," she continued. "I'll find out when the baby is born."

Hiei nodded, deciding to say no more.

"Now please, can you take me to my bed?" she asked.

He nodded again and stood up, gathering her into his arms.

"You can send Monzan to Yukina if you need to go back to demon world," she said as he lifted her from the couch.

"He's staying with me," Hiei said firmly. "Wait here," he told Monzan.

Monzan nodded and sat back in the couch. Hiei moved on through the house to his bedroom, where he carefully laid Botan down into the bed.

"Thank you," she said softly.

"You need to relax," he told her.

"I know," she muttered, closing her eyes.

"No, listen to me woman, you need to relax," he said firmly. "The baby is reacting to what you're thinking, if you don't calm down and start thinking straight, the pain won't stop. Any emotions you're suppressing only make it worse. You need to focus."

Botan opened her eyes again and gave Hiei a sceptical look, but he remained firm.

"You absolutely must calm down and be reasonable," he insisted.

"Are you saying I'm usually neurotic and unreasonable?" she asked.

She winced slightly as soon as the words had left her mouth.

"You see? You have to stop getting angry," he said.

She tried to laugh, but the expression was short and breathy.

"Mister angry himself, who always over-reacts, is telling me to calm down?" she said.

"You're just as bad at over-reacting when you get angry as I am," he replied. "The only difference is that I'm stronger than you and I can do more damage with my anger."

Botan made to argue with him but then stopped.

"Good," Hiei said. "You're remembering to stay calm now."

"No, it's not that," she said, shaking her head slightly. "I was just thinking that you're probably right. I do sometimes get quite excitable when I lose my temper. But that's what happens when you're a passionate person, right Hiei?"

She smiled up at him and reached one shaking hand up to touch his face. The look in her eyes had finally changed, and once more Hiei saw that look of unquestioning love and loyalty, that look he had never experienced before from anyone else and he only experienced from paradise Botan.

"I really am sorry about today," she said.

Hiei shook his head.

"Don't apologise," he insisted.

"But I feel that I must," she said. "If you had married a demon woman you wouldn't have had to put up with Koenma always trying to find an excuse to have you sent to spirit world prison, and you could have spent all your time in demon world."

"Don't say such stupid things," he argued. "I married you, you idiot."

"I didn't know that he was going to come here today and cause us all this trouble," she continued. "And I want you to know that I don't believe a word of it. I don't care what he says any more Hiei, my place is at your side, wherever that is. I trust you completely, and I'm as offended by what Koenma said as you are."

"Well, that's–"

"No, wait, I'm more offended by what Koenma said than you are. And I mean that."

She sighed before lowering her hand to her lips and kissing her fingertips and then touching them to Hiei's lips.

"I truly do love you, Hiei," she said.

Hiei knew that Botan meant what she had said, the look on her face alone was undeniable proof that she was talking honestly and from the heart: but he could not stop himself from saying something that had started to bother him suddenly and for no apparent reason.

"When you say that you love me," he said. "Do you mean that you love me, or do you mean that you love that other Hiei?"

Botan's face changed instantly.

"What?"

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei has a small crisis of conscience, he makes a deal with Monzan and his wound from the Dividing Realities seemed to have healed: and at the end of it all, Hiei's opinion on luck starts to change. **Chapter 31 – Lucky Man**


	31. Lucky Man

**Recap:** Koenma and Co. arrived in the living world to warn Botan that Hiei was not that other Hiei (yes, we're reaching the complex part of this fic – and by that, I mean more complex than it already has been…) and Botan heroically defended his name: but it ultimately led to Hiei asking Botan who she loves, him or "that other Hiei".

* * *

 **Chapter 31: Lucky Man**

"When you say that you love me, do you mean that you love me, or do you mean that you love that other Hiei?"

"What?"

Hiei had no idea how to explain his question, but it was one that, suddenly, he quite desperately needed to know the honest answer to. After all, he was in love with Botan, and he could finally see that for everything that it was: he enjoyed simply being near her, her smile made him happy, he wanted her to be the mother of his children, he wanted her to be the one woman quietly clever enough to win the approval of Mukuro and join him in demon world, he could not resist her charms – physically or otherwise – and the thought of actually spending the rest of his existence with her as his exclusive lover made him feel genuinely happy. But what use was any of that if she did not actually feel the same way about him? He was not that other Hiei, he did not even want to be that other Hiei, he hated that other Hiei, and if it was that other Hiei that she was in love with, then everything suddenly seemed like a huge joke, even more absurd than the thought of life back in the norm reality.

"What are you…?" Botan asked. "I don't understand, "that other Hiei"? What "other Hiei"?"

"The other one," Hiei replied. "The one that doesn't have my soul in his body."

Botan gave him a disbelieving look, her eyes searching his in confusion.

"The one that doesn't…?" she whispered. "Because of what Koenma said about you being possessed by another soul…?"

She shook her head slightly before her face started to very slowly change again, her eyes regaining their usual lively sparkle and her lips curling into a smile.

"Oh, Hiei, stop it!" she giggled. "You have such a dry, sarcastic sense of humour!"

"I wasn't…" Hiei began. "I was trying to… I just needed to know the truth."

"You needed to know the truth?" she asked. "You should already know the truth, but if you need to hear it again here goes: I don't care how possessed you are, I still love you, and I always will. Now stop mocking what just happened. There was nothing funny about it at all."

"I wasn't mocking it," he corrected her.

"Yes you were! I saw what you were trying to do, so don't try to deny it now. You were trying to make me laugh so that I would relax and not upset the baby any more. Very clever."

"No…"

"Now I would like to just lie here until I stop sweating, if that's alright, so come here and give me a kiss and then get back through there and check on poor Monzan."

"But I…"

Hiei let Botan pull him down by his shirt, despite the fact that she was so weakened she could barely keep her fists closed around his clothing and her tug was pitiful at best. He had lost the will to argue with her, because in his own mind he no longer knew what to think about anything any more. If he continued to push her for an answer, he would have to explain to her who he really was and admit that Koenma's "wild accusations" had actually been grounded in solid fact, and, after Botan had just openly shot him down for making those accusations, telling her now that he had been right seemed like a massive insult to her. But if he did not push her for an answer then he would never know the truth: was she in love with that other Hiei or him? Obviously she had married that other Hiei, but how did she feel now? Did it even matter? Monzan and the baby she was carrying were proof that he was genetically identical to that other Hiei – were they even two different people any more?

Hiei remembered what he had said to Botan mere minutes earlier on the couch, the speech he had given about the relationships between the three worlds, the lecture that was still droning on in a small part of his mind, and he was reminded that he was a different person from that other Hiei. That other Hiei cared about politics and people and leadership and progression, whereas Hiei cared about–

"I love you, Hiei."

Botan moved her hands to his face and brought her lips to his. She kissed him exactly the same way she had done the day he had first encountered her in the paradise reality on his first visit there. It was the same tender and yet bold gesture that made the permanent tension in his shoulders ease, it gave him an immense feeling of calm and belonging and it began an undeniable rush of joy and desire coursing through his veins.

"Don't look so worried, sweetie," she said as they parted. "It wasn't a very appropriate joke and you told it too soon after the event, but it was still quite witty."

Hiei both hated and loved that moment. He hated that he could not muster the strength to correct her and demand an answer from her, he hated that he was so weak that all he wanted to do was crawl into bed alongside her and hold onto her and he hated that, between Koenma's interference and his own stupidity, he had almost been expelled from paradise. And yet strangely he also loved some of the things he hated: because for some reason – whether it was the influence of that other Hiei or not he could not be certain – he loved that his own weaknesses were something so wonderful and something that did make his life seem that much more focused, meaningful and finally enjoyable.

"I love you, Botan," he said.

"I know you do, sweetie," she answered.

"No, please, listen to me," he said. "I actually love you."

"I actually love you too, Hiei," she said, smiling at him playfully.

"No, this isn't a joke. I'm talking about how I actually feel, not… I am actually in love with you."

Botan pulled a face of mock seriousness and nodded.

"I wasn't joking either," she said in a falsely stern voice. "I am actually in love with you too. I wouldn't have married you if I wasn't."

Hiei sighed, both in despair and in acceptance of defeat. It was debatable which of them was more misunderstood at that moment, because, as confused and conflicted as he was, Hiei was still sensible enough to realise that Botan was probably trying to express something to him in a way that only that other Hiei would appreciate or be amused by.

"Give me another kiss and then go and make sure that our son is alright," she said.

Hiei nodded, because he could see no more reason to argue, and he leaned forwards to kiss her again, this time prolonging the contact a little and truly savouring the warmth and softness of her lips. She made a small moan that he felt the vibrations of against his lips and he had to fight the increasing urge to just get into bed with her.

"Be gentle with Monzan today," she said as they parted again. "He's just a child."

Hiei nodded and reluctantly backed up to the doorway, watching Botan as he went. He saw her chest rise and fall as she took an especially deep breath and slowly sighed it out again. Her eyes drifted shut and her body relaxed into the bed, but he could still see sweat beading along her forehead and occasionally running down over the sides of her face and neck. She was, he knew, in a lot more pain physically and mentally than she was admitting to, but rest was definitely the best thing for her, and there was nothing that he could actually do to relieve her pain any anyway: which was quite infuriating, as he had been the one to cause it, and now he just wanted to undo it.

Hiei wanted to undo a lot of things.

He turned away from Botan and softly closed the door. She had not asked him to close it and she had not specifically said that she intended to sleep, but he hoped that she would, as she needed to recuperate her strength and energy. He slowly walked back into the living room, where he found Monzan still sat on the couch, looking almost comically absurd as his already rounded face had swollen out at one side where he had apparently taken a blow to the mouth. He gave Hiei a lop-sided smile, but the amount of white showing around his eyes told that he was still a little bewildered by everything that had happened that morning. Hiei sat down next to him, glancing over at the broken remains of the spirit world communication device Botan had discarded and the torn up pieces of the warrant for his arrest that Koenma had given her.

"Come here," he said to Monzan.

Monzan looked a little unsure, but they both avoided looking directly at each other and he crawled over, climbing a little awkwardly into Hiei's lap and accepting the offer of a hug he was being made. Hiei was not entirely surprised to feel that his son was still shaking slightly – it was probably mostly an after-effect of summoning the amount of energy he had to issue his death threats to Koenma – but it still left him feeling that sickening sense of a loss of control and the need to fix something that was already broken apart beyond repair.

"I know that your mother tells you to keep your bandana on when you're at kindergarten," Hiei said slowly. "And you should, around humans, but it's okay to remove it and use your third eye to check on your mother if nobody is looking at you and as long as that's all you do."

For Monzan's own safety in the living world it was sound advice – no human would understand if they saw that he had an eye in his forehead and he would be cast out of society there and forced to live in demon world, away from his mother. But it was equally important that the boy looked after his mother.

"Sometimes I do other things," Monzan mumbled into Hiei's shirt.

"Other things?" Hiei asked. "What other things?"

"Sometimes I look for other things," Monzan said, his voice still muffled. "Not just mommy."

"…Like what?"

"Sometimes I look for Yusuke's keys when he's lost them."

Hiei smiled, partly in amusement and partly in relief.

"And sometimes I use my special eye to watch my brother, too."

"What?"

Hiei grabbed Monzan's shoulders and moved him back to look him in the face.

"What did you just say?" he asked.

"Am I in trouble?" Monzan asked quietly.

He was attempting to pout, but the look was failing rather miserably as he looked more like he had stuffed a golf ball into one side of his mouth and he was trying to swallow it whole.

"No," Hiei said slowly. "But what makes you think you're going to have a brother and not a sister?"

"Because I can see him," Monzan replied, looking a little confused as though he thought his answer should have been obvious.

"You can see that already?" Hiei asked in a low voice.

Monzan nodded.

"But you haven't told anyone?" Hiei asked.

Monzan shook his head.

"Mommy said I'm not allowed to talk to anyone about my special eye apart from you," he said.

Hiei tried to keep the relief from showing in his face: Botan had made such a fuss about wanting to be surprised by the sex of her child and for one panicked moment Hiei had thought that perhaps Monzan had, or soon would, ruin that surprise for her.

"That's right," he said. "Don't talk to anyone about this but me."

"Like an agreement between men?" Monzan asked, his eyes brightening.

"Yes, it's an agreement between you and me," Hiei replied.

"One time I made an agreement between men with uncle Kuwabara too," Monzan said.

Hiei was mildly amused at his words, partly because they reminded him that even Monzan referred to Kuwabara by his surname and partly because the thought of an agreement between a child and an idiot was simply too ridiculous for words.

"But it's over now," Monzan added. "It was when it was aunty Yukina's birthday and we had a secret surprise party. I didn't tell anyone and aunty Yukina was really surprised."

"Yukina has the same birthday as me," Hiei said, the words leaving his mouth before he realised their implication. "…So… Did I…?"

"Mommy said you don't like birthdays," Monzan said.

Hiei again started to feel his hatred for that other Hiei mounting. Not only was that other Hiei not around for his own son's birthdays, apparently he had put a ban on anyone celebrating his own birthday too.

"I'm bored, can I go play swords with uncle Kuwabara until mommy wakes up?" Monzan asked, apparently unaffected by the crisis of conscience Hiei was suffering.

"Play swords with Kuwabara?" Hiei repeated.

"Uncle Kuwabara showed me how to play swords before I played it in demon world," Monzan replied.

"You learned your sword skills from that bumbling oaf?" Hiei blurted out before he could stop himself.

Monzan nodded.

"That's stupid," Hiei scoffed. "He'll teach you bad habits. And he'll make you slow and clumsy like he is. You should be training with me."

Monzan gasped and looked suddenly excessively delighted – and almost exactly like his mother.

"Have we ever…?" Hiei asked awkwardly. "Have I ever "played swords" with you?"

Monzan shook his head.

"That's even worse," Hiei said. "From now on, you will play swords with me."

Monzan started to cry out but then quickly clapped his hands over his mouth.

"Oops, mommy is asleep!" he whispered.

"Yes, well, how often do you usually "play swords" with Kuwabara?" Hiei asked.

"Every day," Monzan replied, his face twitching slightly.

"Don't lie to me, boy," Hiei warned him. "I can tell when you're lying."

"Only at weekends," Monzan corrected himself. "I can tell when people are lying too."

"Hn, really?"

"Yeah. Yusuke said I'm a living pony-gaff."

"Polygraph."

"I can use my special eye to see the truth."

"Yes, mind-reading is a more advanced skill of a jaganshi and it takes a lot of practice to perfect, and… You can do that already?"

Monzan nodded and Hiei felt as though he had been thrown through a wall: or like another wall had just been built around him, closing him in tighter along with the restrictions of Mukuro, Kurama and Koenma knowing about his true identity and trying to force him out of paradise.

"You can't read my mind," Hiei said.

He thought that it probably was true, but he needed to test the theory anyway.

"I'm not allowed to read your mind," Monzan replied. "I don't look for lying unless I have permission."

Hiei was unsure if that was anything of a relief or not. Monzan was, generally speaking, quite obedient, but he had demonstrated that morning that he would defy orders if he thought they were wrong, and Botan had said that he was sneaky, so it was possible that he might try to read a mind without permission, and if he ever read Hiei's mind, all hell would break loose. It was unlikely that Monzan was strong enough to overpower Hiei and read his thoughts, and he probably never would be: staying a step ahead of him would not be beyond reason.

But that other boy, the one still growing inside Botan, was another matter entirely: that child would probably be able to see right through Hiei before he could even talk.

"Let's go," he said, lifting Monzan off of his lap and standing him on the ground.

"Where are we going?" Monzan asked.

"To train," Hiei replied, standing up and taking hold of one of Monzan's hands.

He needed a distraction, and something physically demanding sounded quite pleasant at a time when his mind was exhausting from the demands of every little disaster that had been mounting up around him lately.

* * *

"Just pick one," Hiei sighed impatiently.

"I don't understand," Monzan said, looking up at Hiei curiously.

"We're going to spar," Hiei said, drawing out his sword to better demonstrate his point. "So pick a weapon, and let's go."

Hiei waved his sword at the array of ornamental weaponry hanging on the wall in front of him. They were real weapons, but judging by the size, shape and intricacy of detail on some of them, they were clearly meant to be kept as treasures. Which, in Hiei's mind, was completely redundant: only humans would keep sharp and deadly weapons as treasures. Did they use precious stones to fight with instead? It was completely ridiculous.

"The bamboo swords are in the other room," Monzan said.

"Bamboo swords?" Hiei echoed. "What do you need a bamboo sword for? I saw you use a full-size katana in demon world, you don't need a fake sword! Do you think you can take on this with a bamboo sword?"

Hiei swiped his sword through the air to demonstrate his point, creating a displacement of air that wafted over Monzan, ruffling his hair slightly.

"But mommy said I'm not allowed to use a real sword in the human world," Monzan said.

"You're allowed to use it if you're sparring with me," Hiei said, grabbing the nearest short sword he could reach and flinging it at his son.

Monzan caught it more adeptly than Hiei had expected him to after catching him off-guard, but he looked unhappy with it.

"This one's too small," he said, holding it up towards Hiei.

"No it's not," Hiei corrected him. "You don't understand how to choose a sword. You chose the wrong size in demon world, too."

"But I can use a big sword, I don't need a small sword," Monzan said sulkily.

"It's not an insult to your skill, it's a matter of practicality," Hiei said firmly. "You will do more damage with a small sword that you have full control of than a big sword that you struggle to use. You pick the size of sword based on the length of your arm."

Hiei held out his arm and flipped his sword over in his hand, keeping hold of the hilt in his hand and laying the blade flat along the length of his arm.

"See?" he said. "The point rests on my shoulder. You try it."

"I think you're underestimating me, daddy," Monzan said quietly.

"Do it!" Hiei barked.

"Okay."

Monzan turned the sword over, lying it along the length of his arm. It was, Hiei noted, still fractionally longer than was ideal, but it was the shortest length of sword amongst those on display without resorting to using a long dagger.

"That'll do," he concluded.

Monzan looked less than happy but Hiei ignored it.

"Now do you understand how to choose a sword for balance?" he asked.

Monzan did not answer him, instead simply looking completely confused. Apparently that other Hiei had taught the boy absolutely nothing.

"You should choose your weapon based on your…"

Hiei's voice trailed off as he saw Monzan start to pick his nose. For a brief moment he saw the boy as a human child and he began to question his own logic at attempting to teach him anything about combat: but remembering the power the boy had demonstrated earlier when threatening to kill Koenma he was able to focus himself again.

"You should consider the balance of the blade, but I'll show you how once I've seen how you use one," he concluded. "Just take that one for now, we'll come back and choose another one later if it's not right. Follow me."

Hiei walked on along the corridor, ignoring Kuwabara as he went, who had apparently only just realised that they were in the temple and had come to ask why they were taking one of the antique swords from the display cabinet. He heard Monzan cheerfully telling Kuwabara that he was going to play swords with his daddy and, although it was muttered, he heard Kuwabara responding that it had been nice knowing Monzan – presumably because he thought that Hiei intended to kill his own son.

"Hn," Hiei grunted, shaking his head.

He heard Monzan hurrying to catch up to him as he rounded a corner and started his approach to an exit that led out to the side of the temple overlooking the tree-house: though the tree-house itself was barely visible from the temple due to the initial layer of trees between them. Hiei moved out to the flat, open stretch between the temple and the trees and there he stopped, his sword still in his hand, and he waited for Monzan to stop in front of him.

"I need to understand your style, your ability, your strengths and your weaknesses," he told him. "So I want you to attack me with all your strength. Try to kill me."

Monzan's face dropped.

"I'm serious boy," Hiei insisted. "Pretend I'm Koenma."

"Koenma is a very mean man," Monzan said solemnly.

"Yes, just pretend that you're attacking him instead of me," Hiei said. "I'm not going to attack back, I'm just going to defend myself."

"Will I be in trouble when I stab you?" Monzan asked.

"Hn, when? You're that confident you can get through my defences?"

Hiei did not know if he was offended or impressed by the boy's confidence when he saw him nod his head, his eyes shining with determination and his expression still set quite seriously.

"If you can inflict damage on me, we can move on to the next stage in your training," Hiei told him. "If you can penetrate my defences, then I will start attacking back: and I will be trying to kill you, so you'd better be as confident in your own defences as you are in your ability to attack. Duels are not just about attack strategies, it's not just swinging a blade around like a club and hoping for a hit."

Monzan looked a little offended then but said nothing, which Hiei took to be a sign that the boy was still at least respectful enough not to criticise his father's words of advice.

"Whenever you're ready, you can start," Hiei added.

Monzan tilted his head suddenly and quite drastically to one side.

"You're not ready yet," he said.

"Of course I am," Hiei replied.

"But you're not holding up your sword yet," Monzan pointed out.

"I don't need to," Hiei said.

Monzan's face darkened over.

"You're underestimating me!" he said stubbornly.

"Prove it," Hiei growled.

Monzan looked enraged, but it was certainly a more reassuring sight than watching him pick his nose and look confused. He leapt into the air and launched himself at Hiei far faster and more forcefully than Hiei had expected him to – mostly because he had suspected that the boy would hold back when faced with duelling against his own father – and Hiei barely managed to bring up his own weapon to block the first shot Monzan took.

After his initial shock had passed, Hiei managed to hold Monzan's attacks back, though he did start to sweat quite early into the conflict, partly because it was an effort to contain his natural instinct to hit back and partly because Monzan was actually stronger than he had given him credit for, and every time their blades clashed he had to tense substantially to hold his own weapon in place. He was, of course, also suffering slightly from his continuing lack of sleep, and his ever-increasing dependence on coffee meant that whenever he went more than few hours without one, his energy levels dipped to ridiculous lows: which he supposed they were doing now, after the strain of travelling to demon world and back and dealing with Koenma's interference.

Hiei briefly entertained the notion that he was making excuses for himself because, secretly, he was surprised at how strong and able his son actually was. He was proud and pleased that the boy was powerful, but he did not intend to let him surpass his own skill until he had at least had a few decades of combat experience as an adult: though staying ahead of him that long might involve a bit of work on his part, Hiei thought.

And as though to prove his concerns to be perfectly valid, Monzan somehow managed to catch him out with a fake, altering the angle of his attack at the last possible moment. Hiei contained a cry of shock as he felt Monzan inadvertently do him a favour by catching the tip of his blade against his mid-section and cutting through his shirt, bandages and part of his wound from the Dividing Realities. A small spray of blood shot off to one side and Hiei saw Monzan falter slightly at the sight of the red stains on his weapon, and he mistakenly assumed that the boy would stop: and Hiei barely managed to leap back out of the way of a deadly blow when he was proved wrong.

Hiei looked down at his left forearm, seeing a long, shallow, linear gash where his arm had been caught as he tried to back out from taking the hit Monzan had aimed at his shoulder. Apparently Monzan had been right about one thing: Hiei had underestimated him. But not any more. Keeping true to his word, Hiei started to attack back. At first he was furious, because Monzan seemed unsurprised and lost none of his intensity despite having to take a much more defensive stance. But, as his superior strength started to overwhelm the boy and he saw his face changing as he was forced to stumble backwards, Hiei managed to keep his anger under control and focus on the positive fact that, despite what he had initially thought, Monzan did actually have a fundamental knowledge of how to defend as well as attack in a duel. However, his physical strength paled in comparison with Hiei's, and within barely a minute after he had started attacking back, Hiei managed to whack the sword out of Monzan's grasp, sending it flying through the air and onto the roof of the temple, where it landed with a small clatter.

Hiei smirked to himself, readying to force the boy to surrender to him: but to his shock, as he stabbed his sword forwards Monzan leapt up to avoid the tip of the blade, landed briefly on the blade itself and then launched himself off of it, kicking the underside of Hiei's jaw and then darting off towards the temple. Hiei snarled out in anger, spitting out blood and turning sharply to see his son scaling the temple wall in an apparent attempt to retrieve his weapon from the roof. His determination and audacity defied belief, but Hiei did not have time to think about that as Monzan was getting dangerously close to recovering his sword and then (presumably) resuming his attack, and so he hurried after him, only managing to catch him because, unlike Monzan, Hiei was able to launch himself onto the roof in one leap.

Monzan was almost upon his fallen weapon when Hiei finally managed to grab a handful of his hair to halt him, dropping down to his knees behind him and bringing around his own sword to hold the length of the sharp edge of the blade along his throat. He was almost immediately forced to tighten his grip on Monzan's hair and move his threat closer to his throat when he made one last attempt to reach for his sword, which was just beyond his arm's length from where he had stopped. He made a small noise of frustration and from the corner of his eye, Hiei saw that he was started to get teary-eyed – another symptom of his human genes, Hiei thought, the boy was probably now going to cry and sulk because he had lost, which was pathetic and unacceptable. Hiei had intended to force Monzan into vocalising his surrender and admitting his defeat, but seeing the boy's reaction and feeling a strange tugging sensation somewhere in his chest he decided not to bother, since it seemed that he had already made his point.

Hiei slowly released Monzan and stood up, throwing down his own sword on top of Monzan's and then unhooking the scabbard from his belt and throwing it down too.

"Take those inside and clean them," he said.

Monzan looked up at him, but it was difficult to tell what he was thinking as his eyes were still blurry with unshed tears.

"You know where the weapons rooms is?" Hiei asked him.

Monzan nodded.

"Then take those inside and clean them," Hiei said. "Clean everything. Until you can beat me, you clean up after a sparring session, got it?"

Monzan watched him silently for a moment before nodding and gathering up the swords into his arms. It was quite a burden for him because of his size, and Hiei had no idea how he was going to manage to get down from the roof carrying it all, but he was not about to go soft on the boy.

"Those soldiers who fought you off this morning are a lot stronger and a lot more skilled than you are," he added. "But they aren't necessarily any more powerful than you are. You need to learn how to control and use your abilities effectively. Once you do, those soldiers will be easy for you to overcome."

Monzan looked a little less upset and so Hiei turned and leapt off the roof, landing on the ground before realising that he was being watched. Around the corner of the building, Yukina was standing staring at him, her mouth hanging open. He started towards her, silently wondering why she looked so shocked.

"What are you doing?" she asked in a strained voice as he neared her. "He's just a child! He's too young for that sort of fighting!"

"Hn, when I was his age I was far more capable than that," Hiei replied. "I was raiding banks and cutting down some of the most ruthless criminals to be had."

"But Hiei you're a full demon and you did those things because you had no other choice!" Yukina said. "Monzan is half-human and he isn't ready to fight with proper swords yet! Kazuma always gives him a bamboo sword and they just play, they never actually fight like that!"

"He's perfectly able to use a proper sword, he just doesn't use one in the living world because Botan told him not to," Hiei said. "He uses proper swords in demon world and he can easily stand up to Mukuro's trainee soldiers."

Yukina gasped and then covered her mouth with her hands.

"…And you didn't know about that…" Hiei added.

"Oh brother, why?" she wailed. "You can't take him to demon world and make him fight Mukuro's soldiers!"

"Trainee soldiers," Hiei corrected her.

"And he's still hurting from this morning, he should be relaxing, not fighting!" she said.

"He needs to get stronger and improve his skills," he said.

"Oh, but he looks so sad! And those swords must be so heavy to carry when he's already tired and worn out!"

Hiei quickly grabbed Yukina's arm to stop her as she tried to go over to help Monzan as he finally made it to the ground.

"Leave him," he insisted when she looked up at him questioningly. "He has to learn."

"But it's so harsh!" she said faintly.

Hiei sighed and released her, but gave her a stern look that she apparently understood as she did not move again except to give Monzan a sympathetic look as he trudged into the temple with the swords.

"Make me some coffee," Hiei ordered her.

She looked confused for a moment before eventually nodding, and he followed her back inside.

* * *

As Hiei finished off his fifth coffee, Monzan entered the kitchen, his face smeared with dirty fingerprints and a cloth over his upturned hands, which were supporting Hiei's and his own sheathed swords. Hiei placed down his mug and ignored the adoring look Yukina was giving Monzan, crossing the room to where the boy had stopped. As he approached, Monzan lifted his hands up higher, looking up at Hiei expectantly. Hiei picked up his own sword, inspecting the outside before sliding it out to check the blade. Surprisingly it was remarkably clean and polished: though it had not been terribly dirty before. Hiei hooked his own sword onto his belt again and then picked up Monzan's sword, taking a little longer to check it over, specifically to check the end of the blade for any residual bloodstains after Monzan's two lucky strikes during their sparring session.

"Fine," he concluded, returning the sword to its sheath when he found it to be flawlessly clean. "Keep this from now on, it seems to serve you well."

Monzan hurriedly wiped his hands on the cloth he had – and Hiei could see why, since his hands were as black as the smears on his face – and he then accepted the sword back, poking it through the sash tied around his waist.

"Isn't that one of the antique swords from the collection in the display cabinet?" Yukina asked.

"Keep it safe, and only use it when you spar with me or when we go to demon world," Hiei said to Monzan. "When you get bigger you can move up to the next size."

"That's the shortest of three swords just like that one from the collection in the display cabinet," Yukina said. "They're very valuable antiques, if you use them for combat they'll get damaged!"

"If you use that sword the next time we go to demon world, I know you'll impress Mukuro," Hiei said to Monzan, who smiled in response.

Yukina sighed – apparently in acceptance of defeat as she said no more about the value of the sword as an ornament. As she had said, it was – quite conveniently – the smallest in a set of three identically designed swords – a traditional katana, wakisashi and tanto – the largest of which was a normal, full-size, two-handed weapon, and so as Monzan grew up he could move through the sizes.

"Good work," Hiei said, touching a hand to Monzan's head.

He smiled cheerfully then and Hiei smiled a little himself.

"I think you should get cleaned up, Mon-Mon," Yukina said. "Come on, I'll help you out."

She held out a hand to him and he looked up at Hiei expectantly. Hiei nodded and Monzan then gladly took Yukina's hand and let her lead him out of the room. Once they were out of sight Hiei slipped out of the temple and back into the forest beyond, quietly and carefully climbing up the tree nearest his bedroom window. Botan was asleep, as he had hoped she would be, still lying in the position he had laid her down in, her hair still a little damp from sweat but her face dry and finally peaceful. Hiei breathed a small sigh of relief and sat back against the trunk of the tree, glad that Botan was not suffering any more and that he had – quite miraculously – been seen as innocent despite Koenma's accusations that morning.

Though how much longer that would be the case was debatable: if Koenma persisted with his accusations and continually invaded his home in the living world, it would only be a matter of time before either Kurama or Mukuro said something to Yusuke or Botan, or until any of the others started to get suspicious.

But despite this added complication, life in paradise was still worth the extra effort needed to stay there.

* * *

Hiei awoke with a start. He was suddenly in complete darkness in the forest, and a cursory glance at the sky told him that it was indeed night-time, meaning that he had just slept for at least eight hours. In his blind panic he fell from the branch he had been sleeping on, colliding with a few more branches on his way down before finally landed on the forest floor. He quickly scrambled to his feet and tore off his shirt and hurriedly ripped loose the bandages underneath, cursing when he saw that his abdomen was apparently healed: had he been sent back to the norm reality?

He turned around on the spot, the fact that he was in complete darkness only seeming to reaffirm that he was in the wrong reality, as he had definitely fallen asleep in a tree overlooking his house, and yet there was no sign of the lanterns that usually illuminated it after dark. He began clumsily stumbling through the trees until he reached the edge of the forest, stopping there as he saw that the old lady's temple was still standing, looking as immaculate as it did in paradise: which made absolutely no sense.

Hiei looked down at himself again, this time paying more attention to the specific details: he was still wearing his wedding ring, he only had his own hiruiseki around his neck and, although the cross-mark wound he had been sporting had healed almost into invisibility, the centre of the cross was still slightly wet and the top edge of the cross that Monzan had deepened during their duel was still noticeably raw: but if Monzan had not made that strike, Hiei had to wonder if he would now be back in the norm reality.

He sighed in relief and moved on to the temple, walking inside to be greeted by the smell of a home-cooked meal and the sound of familiar voices chatting happily in a room nearby. Hiei quickly found his way to the others, smiling in spite of himself as he saw Yukina knelt on the ground with Monzan, helping him do something with brightly coloured plastic shapes, and pregnant Botan sat on a couch with Kuwabara looking at something on his camera with him.

"Well hello there, mister sleepy-head!" Botan called over to him. "Decided to join us at last?"

"I've kept some food warm for you, brother," Yukina added.

"Lose your shirt again, Hiei?" Kuwabara asked, giving him a dry look.

Hiei quietly sighed in relief, but he still felt confused.

"I can't see my house out there," he said.

"We had a little power failure," Botan replied. "Nothing to worry about, it should be fixed soon, and if not, we can always stay here tonight."

Hiei nodded.

"Are you alright?" Botan asked him.

He nodded again, though he could feel the blood draining from his face: he was actually so relieved and had been so panicked, he now felt like he wanted to pass out.

"Come on, I'll put your dinner out and make us some tea," she said standing up.

Hiei nodded again and moved to meet her in the middle of the room, letting her hook an arm though his and guide him out of the room.

"I'm glad to see your wound is finally healed over," she said as they left the room. "I was getting so worried about it. It seems to have gotten a lot better just today. That's lucky, isn't it?"

"Lucky?" Hiei echoed.

"Oops, sorry," she said. "I keep forgetting: you don't believe it luck, do you Hiei?"

Hiei sat down in the dining room and watched Botan leave to collect his meal: it was true that he never had believed in luck, but lately he was starting to change his mind. After all, surely only a lucky man could have slept so long and healed so much only to be spared being expelled from paradise by a small sparring wound he had suffered earlier that day.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** The gang are celebrating some good news, but it's not a happy even all round, as cracks are appearing in the perfection of paradise. Kurama is putting pressure on Hiei to leave and when Hiei finds out that he is not the only one suffering from inexplicable moments of déjà vu he starts to worry about his future there. **Chapter 32 – Problems in Paradise**

 **A/N:** These last few chapters (and arguably the next one) might seem a bit uneventful, but I'm basically cramming in as much symbolism and background for part 4 of the story as possible – which is due to start very soon, I promise! I've actually started writing it, so it will be up soon!


	32. Problems in Paradise

**A/N:** Nox Orchid is taken from the game Plant Tycoon (one of the magical plants of Isola)… I know, I need a life already

 **Recap:** Not much happened, just lots of symbolism and precursors of imminent angst. Which begins again in this chapter! See I needed all that fluff to make this upcoming angst seem more… Angsty…

* * *

 **Chapter 32: Problems in Paradise**

The next morning, after power finally returning to the tree-house and Hiei having to carry a sleeping Monzan home, Botan decided to keep Monzan off of kindergarten that day because his face was still swollen and she was worried that his teacher might think that he was an abused child. Hiei knew that the swelling would come down by the following day, but the mark on Monzan's arm from the talisman card would probably last for several days, and cause him discomfort until it vanished: but still the boy stubbornly refused any offers of healing from Botan and Yukina. After breakfast Botan insisted on reading a book with Monzan to compensate for him not going to kindergarten, and so Hiei took the opportunity to go into the city and visit Yukimura Restaurant in search of Yusuke. When he got there, the restaurant was not yet open, but Yusuke was there preparing for it opening and so he let Hiei inside, locking the door behind him.

"I'm flattered, Hiei," Yusuke said as he led Hiei through the tables to the doors at the back. "You decided to have lunch here today? I guess that means you must prefer my cooking to Yukina's, and she is pretty good."

"I'm here to find out if that meeting we were supposed to have two days in a row ever happened yet," Hiei responded.

"Not taking the bait today, too bad…" Yusuke sighed. "Anyway no, is the short answer. I called everyone back in yesterday afternoon and had one of the admin staff take a note of everyone's thoughts, but we didn't decide anything. We can have the meeting next week, it's no big deal."

"Fine," Hiei said, inwardly relieved to be spared the trouble of thinking about that valley for another week.

"If that's it I'll just catch up with you tonight."

"What?"

"I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm gonna be really, really busy today. We're closing the restaurant this evening for our party, so the lunch rush is gonna be worse than usual."

"…Party…?"

Yusuke paused, looking at Hiei with an expression that seemed to be as confused as Hiei felt.

"You haven't heard?" Yusuke asked, tilting his head slightly. "Well I guess maybe nobody told you last night because of everything else that was going on, but I thought maybe… Oh well. Go home and ask Botan, I'm sure she'd rather tell you herself."

"Why can't you just tell me?" Hiei asked.

"I'm busy," Yusuke reminded him. "Come on, I'll let you out again."

Hiei wanted to argue, but as Yusuke was heading for the door and seemingly on the point of literally throwing him out of the restaurant he complied, leaving and hurrying back home. On his way he passed the end of the street Kurama's human mother lived on – the same street Kurama's shop was on – and, out of curiosity, he turned down it, slowing to a casual walk as he neared the shop. It was clearly open for business but there was no-one in sight, and so Hiei entered the shop itself, looking around for any sign of Kurama. He reached the desk and still nobody appeared, but something standing behind the desk caught his attention. In a domed glass case on a shelf on the back wall was a plant pot housing a leafy flower that looked too exotic to be from the living world. Hiei did not recognise it as a plant that Kurama had used in the past, nor did he recognise it as something he had seen in demon world, and yet somehow it seemed strangely familiar to him.

"Hiei!"

"Hn."

Hiei kept his eyes on the strange flowers as Maya approached him, too caught up in trying to remember where he had seen them before to care what she had to say.

"I thought you were at home today," she said. "Kurama went there to look for you."

"What?" Hiei said, turning to her, his interest suddenly shifted.

"Kurama has to talk to you about something, he went to see you at your house," Maya explained.

Hiei nodded, wondering which security recording Kurama had stolen from spirit world this time, before turning his attention back to the flower.

"I still grow them," Maya said to him.

He glanced at her and she nodded towards the flowers he had been staring at.

"Those orchids, I still grow them," she said. "I don't sell very many, obviously, but that one is special. It's the original from my cross-pollination experiment and it's the same one that brought you and me together."

"You and me?" Hiei echoed, turning to her again.

"Yes," she said. "That's my black velvet nox orchid, remember?"

"Black velv… What?"

"That's the flower I developed during my years as a research assistant at the university, back when I was still trying to find a potent psychotropic pollen for hypnosis purposes."

"A po…"

Hiei frowned, feeling confused and conflicted. He had absolutely no idea what the woman was talking about, and yet at the same time, it all sounded strangely familiar somehow.

"That's the flower that bought this shop, reunited me with Shuichi, reunited me with you Hiei and ultimately allowed me the chance to know and understand Kurama," Maya said, her far off tone of voice making her words sound like some sort of dreamy fairy tale.

"The flower bought the shop?" Hiei asked skeptically. "With what? Does it grow money?"

Maya laughed at Hiei's words though he failed to see why, since he had intended them to be a bitingly sarcastic response to her frankly stupid statement about a flower purchasing commercial property.

"Oh Hiei, you really are quite funny!" she said. "Botan was right! There is a lighter side to you that you hide away!"

Hiei gave her a flat look as she continued to chuckle to herself and made another stupid remark about plants that sprouted money instead of fruit or foliage.

"Did you say that Kurama is at my house?" Hiei asked her bluntly.

"Yes," she replied.

"Good."

And with that Hiei took off again. He was not really sure that he understood why Kurama was attaching himself to such a stupid woman. And, quite revoltingly, she bore more than a passing resemblance to Kurama's human mother, and the implications of that were quite nauseating to think about. Hiei decided to blame that attraction on the part of Shuichi that still existed in Kurama – and he knew from his own reality that Shuichi was stupid bastard with a poor sense of judgment – and he supposed that, in time, Kurama would see sense and move on from Maya.

As he reached the temple gate Hiei could hear voices inside the temple talking excitedly and so he proceeded in there to investigate, shortly finding Yukina and Kuwabara dancing around like idiots whilst Kurama watched them with a warm smile – a warm smile that straightened out when his eyes landed on Hiei.

"Why are you being so noisy in here?" Hiei asked Yukina and Kuwabara.

They both started talking jumbled nonsense over each other and so Hiei turned to Kurama for an explanation.

"I've just told them that we're having a little private party at Yukimura Restaurant tonight," Kurama said. "To celebrate my engagement to Maya."

Hiei opened his mouth to ask Kurama if that meant what he thought it might, but before he could put his question into words he was cut off by a voice screaming excitedly behind him, and then the question vanished from his mind as Botan hurried past him and grabbed Kurama's face in her hands, kissing him on the lips and then hugging him far too tightly.

"Where's Maya?" she asked, releasing him again and looking around about him as though she expected Maya to appear from under the folds of his clothing.

"Manning the shop," Kurama replied. "You will join us tonight though?"

"Of course!" Botan replied. "Oh, isn't this so exciting?"

Hiei was too busy glaring angrily at Kurama to care how exciting Botan thought his announcement was.

"Hiei, I'll get to see you in a suit again!" she said to him.

"You just kissed him!" he spat, pointing at Kurama and turning his glare to Botan.

"I was excited and he's my friend!" she replied.

"You kissed him on the lips, idiot!" Hiei pointed out.

"Oh, don't get jealous sweetie," she said. "It was just a friendly kiss. Not like the way I kiss you."

As though to prove her point she kissed Hiei gently, keeping her lips against his until he started to relax before breaking the contact and giving him a sly smile.

"What's happening, mommy?" Monzan asked.

"Uncle Kurama is getting married to Maya!" Botan told him. "And we're all having dinner at Yusuke and Keiko's restaurant to celebrate!"

"Can I come too?" he asked.

"Of course you can, silly!" she said, ruffling his hair. "And we'll have to get a little suit for you too, Monzan!"

"Why?"

"Because you need a suit for going to a wedding."

"Am I allowed to go to a wedding?"

"Yes, of course you are!"

Monzan started to join Kuwabara and Yukina then in talking excitedly about nothing in particular and Hiei accepted the inevitable: in the paradise reality, Shuichi's personality had poisoned Kurama's personality and made him believe that marrying Maya was a good idea.

"We won't be getting married until next summer," Kurama reminded them.

"But it's still so exciting!" Yukina insisted.

"Hey, by then Botan you'll have to get two lots of kids clothes," Kuwabara said.

"That's right!" Botan said, touching her hands to her belly. "I'll be taking Monzan and the baby!"

"Can daddy come too?" Monzan asked her.

Botan laughed.

"Daddy is uncle Kurama's best friend," she told him. "Of course he will be there too! Isn't that right, Kurama?"

Kurama smiled at her but Hiei did not miss the glint of something untoward in his eyes.

"Yes, your mother is correct, Monzan," he said to Monzan. "Your father is my best friend, and I will definitely want him there."

Kurama then turned to Hiei, walking up to him and putting a hand on his shoulder, pulling him around to face away from the others.

"You, on the other hand, I don't even want to be here tomorrow, let alone next summer," he added under his breath. "Speaking of which, why are you still here?"

Hiei looked back over his shoulder at the others, ensuring that they were suitably distracted before walking out of the room. He already knew that Kurama would follow him and so he did not bother signalling for him to do so. He kept going until they were outside, pausing long enough to confirm that Botan, Monzan, Kuwabara and Yukina were still inside and too distracted to notice their departure before turning to face Kurama directly.

"Look, I don't intend to leave this place," he confessed. "I don't see that I'm doing any harm by staying here, so I need you to–"

"You don't see that you're doing any harm by staying here?" Kurama interrupted him. "And what happened yesterday was nothing of concern for you at all?"

"I can fix that," Hiei said: though he had no idea how to.

"No you can't."

Kurama pushed a small jar into Hiei's hand but did not look at him, and so Hiei was left to guess at what it contained. He turned it over, finding it without a label, and of insufficient size to be anything of any great significance. He unscrewed the lid and started to lift it to his nose to sniff at the contents, but he never made it that far as the fumes overwhelmed him and he was forced to hurriedly replace the lid. He spluttered slightly, trying to maintain his composure as he suddenly found Kurama glaring at him again.

"I have an understanding of what it is that holds you here," he explained. "I had hoped that your own conscience would have driven you out before now: you are, after all, fooling an innocent former ferry girl and her four year old child into believing that you are a part of their family, which is, at best, shameful. But since you seem to be unable to differentiate between your soul and the one of the Hiei who actually belongs here, and since you also seem to be completely unable to respond to subtle hints, you leave me with no other choice but to resort to being quite blunt. You understand what that is?"

Kurama nodded at the jar in Hiei's hand, which he raised into the air between them.

"It smells like a very powerful healing balm made of demon plants," Hiei said.

"Correct," Kurama said. "Is my giving it to you straightforward enough, or do I also need to tell you what you ought to do with it?"

Hiei narrowed his eyes slightly. He had not been on the wrong side of Kurama since abandoning Botan when the rock monster had caught her some ten years ago, and he had almost forgotten how persistent and downright intimidating the fox could be when opposed.

"You want me to heal myself and go back to that other reality?" Hiei said.

"I want you to heal yourself and go back to your own reality," Kurama corrected him. "And if you know what's good for you, this time you'll stay there. The guardian of fate is not an idiot, Hiei. If you keep messing around with fate, she will keep coming after you, with the full support of Koenma, the SDF and even King Enma himself. If you won't do this to save yourself that bother, won't you at least do it to save Botan and Monzan the heartache of learning the truth?"

Hiei slowly moved the jar into the palm of his hand, his eyes on it as he did so. He started to close his fingers around it, but before he completed his task Kurama suddenly grabbed his wrist, his grip almost enough to stop the blood flow to Hiei's hand.

"If you break that right now, you will prove to me that you are the poisonous influence that Koenma has accused you of being in this dimension," Kurama warned him.

""Poisonous influence"?" Hiei echoed. "Hn, that's a little melodramatic, isn't it?"

"Not if it proves to be true," Kurama replied. "I've listened to both Koenma and Mukuro give their opinions about your situation and it seems that a soul can only reside in the reality it originated from, by whatever means that takes: if you don't go back to where you belong, where you belong will come to you."

"…What?"

"If you don't go back to your own reality, this will become your own reality."

Hiei looked down at the jar in his hand again. If what Kurama had just said was true, then he really must be assimilating into the paradise reality by becoming that other Hiei. He did not really want that to happen to him, but at the same time, it was arguably no worse than being made to go back to that other reality he would always return to otherwise. And he still thought that, even if that was the case, Kurama had been far too theatrical in calling him a "poisonous influence". After all, unlike in his own reality, Hiei had not broken anything in the paradise reality.

"I don't know why you wasted your time talking to Koenma about this," he said, closing his fingers over the jar.

"Because he is the deputy ruler of spirit world, and better versed in political affairs and the complexities of fate than you or I could ever hope to be," Kurama replied.

"Hn," Hiei said, stuffing the jar into his pocket. "He's the deputy ruler of spirit world but he's spent the last 700 years in diapers with someone else wiping his ass and tying his bootlaces every day, so his ability to offer any sort of valid advice is debatable at best."

"Oh dear."

Hiei turned his head sharply to see that Botan was suddenly standing at his side, her arms folded over her chest, giving him an almost admonishing look.

"You're not talking about my former boss by any chance, are you?" she asked.

"We were discussing Koenma's reasons for approaching us yesterday," Kurama answered her.

"Koenma's completely invalid, unwarranted and unwelcome reasons, you mean?" Botan said, turning to Kurama and giving him a look that almost dared him to contradict her.

"Koenma levied some very serious accusations in Hiei's direction yesterday Botan," Kurama said calmly. "It would be unwise to simply dismiss them without due consideration of the potential–"

"Are you saying that you think what he said might be true?" Botan cut him off. "You don't think I would have noticed if my own husband was possessed? Hiei is your best friend, how can you even think that way?"

"You seem to be quite adamant that he is without fault."

"Of course I am!"

"And what is the grounding for your beliefs? Where does that confidence come from? Do you have proof that what Koenma said is not even remotely true?"

"My beliefs and confidence come from the fact that I love and trust my husband, and I would die before I would sacrifice either of those feelings. I don't have proof that what Koenma said isn't true, but I also don't have proof that it is, and if my husband says it isn't true, then that's good enough for me!"

"Have you directly asked Hiei if the accusations are true or not?"

Hiei balked. If Botan turned to him now, looked him in the eye with that adoring look she always gave him in this reality, that look of unquestionable love and unwavering loyalty and honesty, and she asked him directly if he was an impostor or not, what would he say? Hiei had never had any problems lying in the past to anyone about anything, but he suddenly realised that he had lost that ability when it came to Botan, which was unexpected and more than a little unsettling for him. He had never cared what anyone thought about him or felt about him before, and typically he had only enjoyed seeing people look at him in fear or awe, but in that moment he realised that had changed: now he did actually care what someone thought about and how someone felt about him, and that someone was the ferry girl he had never bothered to even notice for so many years in his own reality.

"I don't need to," Botan said sternly. "Hiei has been spending a lot of time with me and Monzan lately, and I've noticed nothing out of the ordinary about him – and I think that I, as a former ferry girl and assistant to a spirit detective, would know better than anyone if I was dealing with a possessed body or if the man living in my house was not my own husband! I'm not an idiot, and Hiei is not that easily overcome. And, frankly, I'm a little bit disappointed by your lack of faith in us, Kurama."

"I do apologise, Botan," Kurama humbly replied. "I never meant you any ill will or offence. I was merely concerned by Koenma's quite drastic actions and words yesterday, which are perhaps grounded in truth: there may yet be a problem in our midst, and I think it would be wise for us all to remain on our guard."

"I will happily look out for any irregularities," Botan said. "Just not in the vicinity of my own husband, who is an innocent man being wrongly and very unfairly accused. Would your opinion still be this bleak if Koenma had come here accusing Yusuke or Kuwabara of the same thing?"

Kurama opened his mouth but said nothing, instead simply shaking his head.

"I don't want to fight over this," Botan said to him, touching a hand to his arm. "And I'm very pleased about your news today. Let's not let Koenma's lapse in judgement yesterday ruin our celebrations today, okay?"

"Of course," Kurama replied.

He smiled warmly at her, but as she turned from him he gave Hiei one last cold glare before turning on his heel and going back into the temple.

"Oh sweetie, it really hurts me when everyone thinks the worst about you like that!" Botan said, turning to Hiei. "And especially Kurama, your closest friend!"

"It's fine," Hiei lied.

"It's not fine, Hiei," she said. "You're so good to us all, and you have such a beautiful and loving soul. You're so loyal and strong and heroic and you would never turn your back on a friend. I know if Koenma had come here accusing anyone else you wouldn't have doubted them for a second."

She sighed and put her arms around Hiei, and although he returned her gesture, enjoying holding her close as he always did, he could not escape the sense of nausea swirling around his gut. The loyal, strong, heroic man she was talking about who had the magical, beautiful and loving soul was her husband: that other Hiei.

He wondered how she would feel if he told her the truth about who he was, where he had come from and why: she had barely believed that his reality could ever have come about when he told her about it at the lodge, it was unlikely that she would believe the truth even if he did tell it to her.

"Monzan!" Botan said suddenly, releasing Hiei and turning to their son as he stepped out to join them on the porch. "We should get back home and finish your book."

Monzan's face clearly showed that he wanted to do anything but what she had just suggested, and Hiei actually felt himself feeling sorry for the boy, not just for that moment but for everything he had been through in the last day.

"Come here boy," he said, holding out his arms.

Monzan gladly stumbled forwards a few steps and then leapt up into Hiei's arms, hugging him tightly, almost to the point that Hiei had to fight back an instinct to push him off as he came close to choking him.

"I don't want to do the book," Monzan whispered to Hiei.

"What do you want to do instead?" Botan asked.

Monzan tensed slightly, apparently shocked at being caught out, despite having not exactly whispered quietly.

"I want to go play on the beach," he said.

"Okay, how about we see if we can find some fishes in the pools like the one from your book?" Botan offered.

"Okay!" Monzan agreed. "Let's race, daddy!"

Hiei grunted as Monzan roughly pushed himself out of his hold and dropped to the ground.

"What about me?" Botan asked him. "I can't run as fast as you boys can. Will you carry me, Monzan?"

"No," Monzan snorted, eying her over as though she were insane.

"And why not?" Botan asked, planting her hands on her hips and pretending to be angered at his response.

"You're too big," he answered her. "Make daddy do it."

Botan gasped, but could not stop herself from smiling and ultimately giggling a little.

"Why don't you go ahead and find the fishes?" Hiei suggested to Monzan. "We'll meet you down there."

He took hold of Botan's hand and she smiled at him in a way that almost made him want to smile at her in the same idiotic way Kuwabara usually smiled at Yukina.

"Okay!" Monzan said, before running off.

Botan started to walk after him and Hiei moved to keep pace with her, walking with her in silence until they reached the trees around their house, at which point he stopped, tugging gently on her hand to stop her at his side. Without a word he reached his free hand up to her face, guiding her lips to his, making his best effort to kiss her as gently as she did him. She pressed her free hand to his chest and he felt himself sigh and his shoulders relax almost on instinct at her touch: being close to her felt so right, there was no possible way that choosing to stay with her had been the wrong thing for him to do.

Hiei decided then that any bad feelings he had been plagued by were just confusion because, by returning to and staying in paradise he had, for the first time in his life, made a very good decision, and the positive repercussions of it were new and unusual, and he just needed time to adjust to things, for once, turning out for the better in his life.

* * *

That evening Hiei encountered something else surprising that he was forced to hide his feelings about lest he draw unwanted attention to himself for finding it surprising – because surely that other Hiei would not have been surprised by it: Yusuke apparently was an excellent cook, even better than Yukina. The food served at the private party held in Yukimura Restaurant that night was actually better than anything Hiei had ever tasted, including the best of the best to be had in demon world (which he had occasionally managed to salvage discarded batches of from dumpsters outside of quality demon world restaurants during his days as a bandit). He sat silently at a long table and ate as slowly and disinterestedly as he could manage, focusing his energy on not eating the way Monzan was that evening – literally grabbing handfuls of food and pushing his entire fist into his mouth – despite the urge to do so being quite overwhelming. And for a long time, the risk of making a fool of himself by gorging on the food was Hiei's only concern that night. Until he felt something tapping at his foot under the table.

Hiei paused, mid-chew, and lifted his eyes from his food. Botan was sitting directly across from him, but she had her head turned towards Kuwabara's sister, who was sat at her side, and they were deep in discussion about something. Hiei started to chew again, and again he felt something touching the top of his left foot. He gave Botan a hard look but still she did not break from the flow of conversation she was involved in, despite the fact that Hiei could quite clearly feel that it was her foot touching his. As he watched her he felt the sole of her foot come to rest lightly against the top of his foot, and he could feel that she had removed her shoe at some point. She moved slightly in her seat mid-sentence, never taking her eyes from Kuwabara's sister or losing any momentum in her speech, and her slightly altered angle allow her to slide her foot upwards, passing over Hiei's ankle and up his shin.

Hiei tried clearing his throat in a deliberate and unnatural way, but Botan did not look his way – even though her conversation partner briefly did – and she blindly continued pressing her foot against his leg, moving it slightly to push into the inside of his left knee, which made him twitch involuntarily. He tensed and tried to ignore what she was doing, since she seemed to be acting quite flippant about it herself, but as her toes began sliding up the inside of his thigh he found it increasingly difficult to keep control of himself. Hiei started to wonder then if Botan was actually as intelligent as he had begun to think that she was. There was no way that she was accidentally doing what she was, and to deliberately be touching him that way she had to know what sort of response it was going to invoke in him: and anyone who willingly tried to invoke such a response out of a demon had to know that there would be consequences.

Very extreme consequences, Hiei thought darkly as her heel came to rest on the chair between his legs.

"Be careful you don't get indigestion, Mon-Mon," Yukina said to Monzan as he continued to devour more food than a creature so small ought to be able to.

"Are you saying my cooking will make him ill?" Yusuke asked her.

"Oh no, not at all!" Yukina hurriedly replied. "You're cooking is wonderful, Yusuke! It's just that Monzan eats too fast sometimes!"

"He does everything fast," Yusuke pointed out. "Watch this: hey kid, think you can finish your drink before me?"

"Yeah!" Monzan said.

Hiei enjoyed the slight distraction from Botan's behaviour as he watched Yusuke and Monzan both try to drink faster than each other, the former downing a bottle of beer and the latter a bottle of milk. Monzan finished slightly ahead of Yusuke – though he had arguably had less to drink since his bottle had been half-empty when they had started their "race" – and as they put their empty bottles down, both belched loudly enough to get even Botan's attention.

"Monzan!" she snapped.

"Don't nag him, Botan," Yusuke said, rolling his eyes at her. "It's my fault, I told him to do it."

"But it's not polite to behave like that at the dinner table, especially when we are guests," Botan replied. "And you know that, Monzan," she added, glaring at Monzan.

"He was just having fun," Yusuke insisted. "For a little brat with too much power and you and Hiei as his parents, he's actually quite cool."

"Gee thanks, Yusuke," Botan said flatly.

"No, seriously, he's a cool kid," Yusuke said, apparently missing her sarcasm entirely. "Most kids his age piss me off, but he's okay. He's quite funny sometimes, but like I said, look at who his parents are, right? I mean, kids are a huge responsibility and so much effort and hard work and they're so difficult. But your kid is actually okay."

"What are you trying to say, Yusuke?" Keiko asked him.

"I'm just trying to say that Monzan is an okay kid," Yusuke answered her.

"I thought you didn't want kids," Keiko said quietly, pretending to be suddenly fascinated by the pattern on the inside of her rice bowl.

"If I could have a kid like that one, I wouldn't mind," Yusuke said. "But what are the chances of that happening? Hiei was just lucky that his kid turned out so great. That kid practically looks after himself, he hardly ever cries and he doesn't sulk and yell all the time."

"You yell all the time, Urameshi," Kuwabara pointed out. "You can't list that as a reason to hate kids."

"I never said that I hate kids," Yusuke said.

"You just don't want to have any," Keiko muttered.

"Exactly," Yusuke said.

Hiei momentarily forgot about Botan's foot, which was still pressed against his inner thigh, her toes now dangerously close to his groin, as he felt as much as saw the distinct change in Keiko's demeanour. Obviously the subject of children was a sore point for her, and obviously her opinion on the matter was the opposite of Yusuke's: but Yusuke, who had, by that point, had arguably a little too much to drink, did not seem to notice or care that his woman was sitting literally grinding her teeth and clawing her hands into the tablecloth as she fought to suppress whatever it was exactly that she wanted to say.

"Hey, I don't think we had a toast to the happy couple yet," Kuwabara's sister said suddenly.

Hiei did not miss the way she was watching Keiko from the corner of her eye, and clearly her sudden announcement was just an excuse to change the subject, distract Keiko, and draw everyone else's attention away from the slightly awkward conversation that had just taken place around them.

"To Kurama and Maya," Kuwabara said, raising his glass.

"Idiot!" his sister scolded him. "That's not a toast! You're supposed to say something about the couple, not just say their names and start drinking!"

"Sounds good enough to me," Yusuke said, cracking open another bottle of beer. "To Kurama and Maya."

He took a swig from his bottle and Keiko gave him a brief and slightly harsh glare.

"I'd like to say something," Maya said, standing up.

"Yeah, speech!" Botan said.

Hiei grunted as her foot slid forwards and her toes made contact with his crotch. She finally met his eyes at the sound and winked at him knowingly, the slight flicker of her eyebrows telling him that she did know exactly what she was doing to him: though why she was doing it at a gathering of friends and in a place where he could not respond was still a mystery.

"First of all, I'd like to say thanks to Yusuke and Keiko for preparing dinner for us this evening," Maya said.

"It was mostly me," Yusuke told her, earning himself another less than pleasant glare from Keiko.

"And thanks to Mister and Missus Yukimura for closing the restaurant tonight for us to have this little party," Maya continued. "And, since we are all here tonight, I want to just say… Well, I've never really had the chance to say this before, and I thought now was as good a time as any: Hiei, I really want to thank you for all that you've done for Kurama and me."

"What?" Hiei grunted, dropping his chopsticks as the combined pressures of Botan fondling his genitals with her foot and Kurama's woman now making an address to him finally overcame his ability to stay calm.

"I remember the first time I met you," she continued, smiling at him in a way that made him feel even worse. "The day you and Kurama rescued me from that man-eating demon Yatsude. I think you were probably an unwilling participant, only really there to fight, and later convinced to help rescue me by Kurama – or Shuichi as I knew him then."

Despite everything going temporarily mad around him, Hiei found a small moment of inner focus that lasted long enough for him to understand what she was referring to and to finally see the connection between her and Kurama: Maya was that girl Kurama had been trying to rescue from demons the first time Hiei had ever met the fox. Kurama had, quite obviously, been rather fond of her back then, and apparently, in paradise (and all the other realities where Kurama had not been made to go to war) he had somehow found her again and rekindled his feelings for her.

"You were a bit of a troublesome rebel back then," Maya said carefully.

"Heh, he's still a troublesome rebel now!" Kuwabara sniggered.

"But you've settled down," Maya said, giving Kuwabara a slightly admonishing look. "And I appreciate that you returned my memories of the day you and Kurama saved me and what I saw of Kurama and his abilities that day, because it helped me understand who Kurama really is, and it strengthened our love."

Hiei glanced very briefly at Kurama and promptly wished that he had not bothered, as he was almost sure that the intensity behind the darkened green eyes glaring at him had actually been powerful enough to shorten his life by a few hundred years.

"And it gave me such a sense of peace in my life," Maya continued. "I had always known that something was missing in my mind, and I had tried every method I could think of to discover what – I think I've spent more money on hypnotists than most women spend on shoes in their entire lifetime – and of course my search even affected my work: I spent years researching psychotropic plants, all in the vain hope that I could find something to do what the hypnosis could not."

"And all that time all you had to do was just look into Hiei's freaky extra eye," Kuwabara said.

"Shut-up Kuwabara!" Botan snapped. "Hiei's jagan eye is not freaky, neither is Monzan's, and this is a lovely story, so stop interrupting it!"

"I really just wanted to say thank you, Hiei," Maya said to Hiei. "For returning my memories of you and Kurama and those demons. You didn't have to do it, but I'm glad that you did, for all the happiness it brought me, both in the sense of closure and understanding and because it let me get closer to Kurama. I know you don't like sentimental nonsense, but I am thankful to you, so please accept my gratitude."

"You're sort of like the demon of love, aren't you Hiei?" Yusuke asked.

Hiei opened his mouth to snap at the former detective but managed no more than a faint grunt as Botan curled her toes around in an almost painful motion that left him fighting back a tremble of desire.

"You got Yukina and Kuwabara together, you got Maya and Kurama together and got stole Botan from Koenma," Yusuke added.

"Botan was never with Koenma, Yusuke," Keiko snapped at him.

"There's lots of love at this table though, isn't there?" Yusuke said, waving a hand around the others.

"Not all because of Hiei, though," Kuwabara argued.

"He is a lucky little bastard though, isn't he?" Yusuke said, giving Hiei an almost threatening glare. "He's done everything wrong, jumped into the deepest vat of shit and still he comes out smelling better than Kurama."

"Okay Urameshi, I think you need to cool off," Kuwabara said, standing up and moving over to where Yusuke was sat.

"I need to serve dessert anyway," Yusuke said, pushing back his chair and rising to his feet.

Kuwabara followed him from the restaurant regardless, leaving the rest of the table in silence in their wake. The first thing to break that silence was Hiei letting slip a groan as Botan purposely pushed the ball of her foot over an especially sensitive part of his anatomy.

"I'm going to make sure that Yusuke doesn't kill that clown," he said hurriedly, scrambling back from the table and almost tripping over Botan's leg as he staggered out of his chair.

He swiftly left the restaurant in the same direction Yusuke and Kuwabara had taken – though with no intention of going near either of them – and paused by a door marked as the men's toilets, breathing a slow sigh of relief and trying to calm himself before someone noticed what Botan had managed to do to him. But before he could come close to regaining his self-control, Botan herself walked into the corridor he was standing in, smiling at him seductively.

"Why were you flirting with me out there?" he hissed at her, keeping his voice low in case Yusuke and Kuwabara were nearby and overhead him.

"Because I want you," she replied, grabbing handfuls of his shirt and bringing her lips tantalisingly close to his.

"You've already got me, you idiot! We're married!" he reminded her, showing her his ringed finger to underline his point.

"So?" she asked, looking almost annoyed at his response. "That doesn't mean I don't still want you like crazy, it doesn't mean you don't still drive me wild with passion and it definitely doesn't mean that I can't flirt with you…"

"But you aren't flirting with a normal man, fool. You are flirting with the basic instincts of a demon. If you keep it up, I will lose control of myself and let loose on you."

"Mm, I hope so."

"What?! Are you out of your mind?"

"I can't help it. You're incredibly sexy and my hormones are a mess with this pregnancy!"

"I don't think it's the pregnancy that's to blame, I think it's just you! I think you're like this all the time. It's no wonder you had to leave spirit world."

"Oh stop pretending that you don't love it."

Hiei yelled out in shock as Botan pushed him roughly back. He had been expecting his back to hit solid wall, and when it instead smacked into a door that swung away from him on impact he was taken by surprise, staggering back into the room beyond helplessly. Botan released him and moved away from him, allowing him to regain his balance and straighten out his shirt. He then turned to see where she had gone, finding her standing by a set of sinks, looking down at her fingernails in mock interest, keeping her back to Hiei – though he could see her face reflected in the mirrors over the sinks.

"We're in a public restroom," he pointed out.

His eyes wandered to one side of the room and he started to sweat at what he saw.

"For men," he added, turning from the urinals to the mirrors to gauge Botan's reaction to this.

She lifted her head and looked into the mirror at his reflection, but as their eyes met, her smile faded and she started to look pale and almost afraid. Hiei looked over both of his shoulders and then all around the mirror, wondering what she had seen that was having such a sudden and extreme effect on her emotions.

"Are you okay?" he asked when he found nothing of concern around them.

She shook her head and he thought then that he understood the problem.

"You shouldn't be in here, this room is for men only," he said.

"No, it's not that," she said faintly. "It's the feeling I'm getting right now. Can't you feel it too?"

"Feel what?" Hiei asked, starting to worry slightly that it was something of a demonic nature.

Botan turned around and slowly eyed him over and then turned back to the mirror, visibly starting in surprise when she looked at his reflection again.

"Can you really not feel that?" she asked him. "It's… It's never happened to me before, I never thought that it would… I've heard about it, heard about it happening to other people, heard spirits talking about it in spirit world, but it's never actually happened to me before."

"What are you talking about, woman?" Hiei demanded, his patience starting to wear thin.

"It doesn't even make any sense!" she said, looking and sounding slightly angry. "I mean, look at where we are! This is, as you just said yourself, a place I shouldn't even be in, and yet…"

"What are you talking about?"

"When I stand here like this, and look at you in this mirror, I get this undeniable feeling. I've never had it before, but I know what it is: it's déjà vu."

"…What?"

"I feel like this has happened before. Like I've stood here before, and looked into this mirror and seen you standing there. It doesn't make any sense, but I feel it so strongly, and the guardian of fate told me that when a person feels that way it's when they're getting a glimpse into another reality."

"What?"

"So I guess this means that in an alternate reality somewhere, I must have come into the men's toilets in this restaurant and you must have come in behind me and I saw you in this mirror…"

Botan started to laugh, but Hiei was feeling increasingly tense.

"How ridiculous is that?" she asked, turning to face him. "Can you imagine? What sort of messed up reality would find me in these toilets with you – apart from this one, I mean?"

Hiei forced a smile, opening his arms to Botan as she walked up to him and pulled him into a hug.

"How silly," she said. "Though I suppose there are an infinite number of alternate possibilities in both of our lives, so maybe it's true. The funniest part is, I felt awful! I felt like you'd caught me doing something I shouldn't have been doing! Isn't that hilarious? Don't you think that it's hilarious? Even just the idea of another reality makes me laugh, but one where I'm the sort of person who hides in men's toilets really is funny!"

Hiei put his arms around her but he said nothing. After all, he had seen several alternate realities, including plenty of things that were ridiculous and downright absurd, but they had been real nonetheless.

Though he did not like the idea that Botan's first ever experience of déjà vu had happened since his appearance in the paradise reality.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** The warnings come true: paradise starts to turn into Hiei's own reality, and not in a nice way. Yusuke and Keiko, Hitoshi and demon world politics, Botan and Koenma, Kurama an enemy, an intervention, and it looks like Hiei's time in paradise has come to an end. **Chapter 33 – Broken Apart**

 **A/N:** It was chapter 14 in the original storyboard, and it's (finally) now chapter 33! The end of part 3 of this story looms at last!


	33. Broken Apart

**Recap:** The noose was tightening around Hiei (basically) as Kurama piled the pressure on him to leave paradise, and he saw more and more things that seemed out of place and unexpectedly dark for the paradise reality.

* * *

 **Chapter 33: Broken Apart**

Hiei was not really sure how it had come about, but at the end of the night he found himself sitting on the roof of Yukimura Restaurant with Yusuke. Kuwabara had been there too but had left some time ago, taking Yukina, Botan and Monzan back home with him. Hiei could not remember why he had not gone with them, but something about Botan nodding at Yusuke and winking at him and Kurama glaring at him in that same, warning, way had made him climb up to the roof and sit down beside Yusuke, and that was where he still was. Neither had said anything to the other, and Yusuke was nearing the end of a cigarette, which Hiei hoped he would go inside after smoking.

"Do you ever…?" Yusuke muttered.

Hiei turned to him expectantly, almost yelling in frustration when he stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another, quashing Hiei's hopes that he intended to go back home after just one smoke.

"I mean, I know you probably put it about a bit before you got with Botan, right?" he continued.

Yusuke paused to take a long draw on his cigarette before continuing, apparently not needing to hear Hiei's answer.

"But did you get enough that you really wanted to just give it up and spend the rest of your life with just one woman?" he asked. "I know Raizen was happy to starve himself to death after he fell in love with that one human woman – I mean he starved himself of more than just food, if you know what I'm saying – but he'd been with thousands of other women before that, so he already knew how good it could be and he'd already done everything he'd ever wanted to, so it was no big deal, right? I've been "dating" Keiko since I was three years old. I've never even kissed another woman! Do you know… Do you know that Kuwabara has kissed more women than I have? He's slept with more women than I have, and he has a face like a bulldog that's been stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver and just sat on a bunch of bees."

Hiei gave Yusuke a withering look, but he was too busy sucking his cigarette to notice.

"How many women has Kuwabara slept with?" he asked – mostly just because he found it hard to believe that any woman other than Yukina had shown any interest in the fool.

"Only one," Yusuke replied. "Just your sister. But she's a demon, and I bet demon women are more up for doing the kinky stuff, right?"

Hiei's face dropped.

"That's my sister you're talking about, Yusuke," he growled.

"Yeah, and she was raised in a nunnery by those virgins in the ice village, but I bet even she's more exciting in bed than Keiko is," Yusuke grumbled.

"If you don't stop talking about my sister sexually, I will kill you," Hiei warned him.

"But you understand my problem, right?" Yusuke responded, looking and sounding completely unaffected by Hiei's quite genuine threat. "I love Keiko, but holy shit she can be so uptight – I mean, she won't even kiss me in public – and how do I even know that being with her is so great when I've got nothing to compare it to? You're really happy over there with your cute little tree-house and your hot and horny wife and your perfect kid and your family and your Mukuro, but that only works for you because you've been around and you know for sure that Botan is the best out of all the others you laid down with, right? But me, I don't know. I can't buy into all that "honourable love of a good woman gives me a purpose in my life" crap that Kuwabara lives by and you and Kurama have banged your way around plenty of other women so it doesn't matter to you, but it's not working for me."

"What do you want me to say to you?" Hiei asked snippily. "That you should leave Keiko, move to demon world and build yourself a harem of concubines who can cater to your every whim?"

Yusuke turned fully towards Hiei, looking almost optimistic.

"Should I do that?" he asked. "I mean, could I do that?"

"Yes, you could," Hiei replied. "But just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should do it. Trust me, if you do leave your life here, you will regret it. This is as good as it gets, so stop whining like a little girl trying to a have a period. You don't know how lucky you are, you ungrateful bastard!"

Yusuke arched his eyebrows and it briefly occurred to Hiei that he had perhaps said a little too much, but he had been unable to contain his own bitterness: after all, anyone who lived in paradise and thought that they were missing something in their life clearly was an ungrateful bastard, since life in paradise was the absolute pinnacle of existence.

"You get the best of both worlds," Yusuke said after a short pause. "You come here, to the living world, and you can be the loving father and husband, and then you go back to demon world and you can fuck about there like you're still a bachelor. I envy you that."

"I don't "fuck about" in demon world," Hiei said.

"Oh really?" Yusuke scoffed. "You're one hundred percent faithful to Botan? You're in demon world for weeks at a time, and you never once screw around?"

"Absolutely," Hiei said sternly. "Since the first time I had sex with her, I haven't even considered any other woman."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"What about that soldier from the border patrol who used to send you love notes?"

"Maybe that other Hiei had her, but I certainly didn't."

"Wh-what other Hiei?"

"The one that…"

Hiei swallowed hard as he realised his mistake. He was silently glad that Yusuke was quite drunk and he hoped that, by morning, he would have forgotten what had just been said.

"I've never cheated on my wife," he corrected himself.

"You could, you know," Yusuke told him.

"I wouldn't," Hiei insisted.

"But you could," Yusuke replied. "Botan trusts you so completely, she probably wouldn't believe it even if she walked in on you having a three-way with a set of–"

"I wouldn't do that!"

"Don't you ever want to?"

"No!"

"Never?"

"Absolutely not! When I make an agreement, I stand by it, and when I agreed to be Botan's husband, I agreed to faithful to her, and I will stand by that until I die."

"Until she dies."

"Until I die."

"What if she dies first? Are you saying you'd never go with someone else for the rest of–"

"I stand by it until I die. I will love her exclusively for the rest of my life."

Saying the words out loud made Hiei realise that he did actually mean it: somehow, without ever wanting to or realising that he was able to, he had made a lifetime commitment to Botan.

"Because you see, I do want to," Yusuke said.

"You do want to what?" Hiei asked.

"Sneak around," Yusuke replied. "I'm bored and I want to know what it's like to be with someone who isn't so uptight. I can't commit to Keiko until I know that there's nothing better out there."

"Then stop moaning about it and get on with it," Hiei sighed impatiently. "Go to demon world and go wild. Have sex with every woman you meet."

"You think I should?"

"If it makes you stop whining and start acting like a man then yes, you have my blessing. Get to it already."

Hiei got to his feet with another irritated sigh.

"You're right Hiei," Yusuke said behind him. "I should just cool it off with Keiko for a bit and go out there and find myself."

"Yes, well, good luck with that," Hiei muttered, before leaping from the room and starting for home.

He was sick of listening to Yusuke moan, and knew that, in the amount of time he had wasted listening to him, Botan had probably fallen asleep already and he would have to wait until morning to satisfy the needs she had been stirring in him earlier that night.

And for the first time ever, Hiei actually felt pissed off and dissatisfied in paradise.

* * *

After spending another night subtly widening his wound, caffeinating himself awake and forcing himself to watch the video he had taken from demon world, Hiei gladly climbed back into bed with Botan in the early hours of the morning and stayed there while she fed Monzan and passed him to Kuwabara to take to kindergarten. As he lay in bed waiting for Botan to return to him, Hiei thought about the video he had watched repeatedly. He felt no more enamoured by its contents, and still thought that opening the speech with the phrase "denizens of demon world" was laughable, but he kept going back and watching it again – and mostly only because of the way Hitoshi ended his speech.

"A better way of life is easily within our grasp with a little application and a lot of teamwork and cooperation. We have the raw materials, we have the skills and we have the resources: and so let us build the foundations of paradise, and let us start with a simple act of goodwill."

Hiei was not even sure that he knew what those words meant – he was especially sure that he did not know what the "act of goodwill" was – and yet still those words seemed strangely appealing to him. Hitoshi's words, and his delivery of them, actually made Hiei feel positive about life. He wondered if they contained a hidden subliminal message somewhere, but despite having watched the video several times over, he had not uncovered any sort of deception. Hitoshi had apparently changed the (demon) world with simple honesty and taking a stand nobody else ever could.

But he was still an ugly bastard with a strange sense of humour who Hiei had rather enjoyed killing in his own reality.

"You look deep in thought, sweetie," Botan said as she returned to the room. "Is something troubling you?"

"No," he replied, lifting back the bed-sheets to allow her to climb back into bed at his side.

"Oh, are you are worried about Yusuke and Keiko?" she asked, pressing her fingers against his brow as though trying to iron out his frown. "Don't worry about them sweetie, they argue a lot, they're both so hot-headed."

"They're both idiots," Hiei said bluntly.

"I don't think that they always appreciate each other the way that you and I appreciate each other. I suppose that's because we had to work hard to be together and we overcame so much, whereas their path to happiness was an easy one, and so they don't really understand how fortunate they are. Sometimes they get a bit unsettled because of that, but I hope they'll always realise how wonderful they are together and that it would be foolish for either of them to go astray."

"Hn, they did have it easy. They all did. I had to work hard to get you."

"Yes you did. And I had to work hard to get away from spirit world to be with you. But we always make sure to remind each other why all that hard work was worth it…"

Botan draped herself over Hiei and he smirked up at her as she pulled her hair loose and it spilled forwards over her shoulders. She put her hands on his shoulders and slowly slid them down his body, moving her head downwards as she went, her hair lightly dragging over his skin just ahead of her hands, the general direction her movements were heading quickly reaffirming the almost painful need that had been building in him since the night before.

"Has your wound still not healed, Hiei?" she asked, paused by his bandages. "I thought it was almost gone?"

"Don't worry about it," Hiei insisted. "Just keep… Just keep going."

Botan smiled at his response and gently placed her hands on his hips, his entire lower body jerking slightly in anticipation of what was to come next. It could not have been very long since they had last been together, but for some reason it seemed like an eternity to Hiei as he lay there waiting, and every touch felt brand new and unexpected: proving again that what Botan had said before about them always having "the same passion of a new love" was in fact true.

"Hiei!"

Hiei tensed and Botan froze, her fingers, lips and tongue frustratingly close to where Hiei wanted them to be.

"Who was that?" Botan whispered, frowning up at him.

"How the fuck should I know?" Hiei hissed back. "Just ignore it. Who cares? Just don't stop."

"Hiei! Where the hell are you?"

Botan sat bolt upright and Hiei snarled out a barely coherent curse in frustration.

"It sounds like Keiko!" Botan whispered, leaping out of bed and pushing her hair back from her face. "I'll go and see what she wants."

Botan began straightening out her clothing, quirking an eyebrow at Hiei as she did so.

"And perhaps you should get dressed just in case she insists on seeing you," she told him.

"You really think I'm going to be able to get clothes on me over this?" Hiei drawled sarcastically, pointing at his painfully stiff manhood.

"Find a way," Botan said. "She sounds quite upset, and I don't think she'll feel any better if she sees you lying there like that."

Hiei groaned, the thought of Keiko walking in on him as he was and yelling at him already redirecting the flow of blood around his crucial areas.

"Fine," he reluctantly conceded, standing out of bed and snatching up his pants.

Botan started for the door, pausing to eye him over and smile at him slyly before disappearing from his sight. As he tried to pull on his clothes he listened carefully to Botan, who hurried as far as the porch outside, stopping there and calling out good morning: and the creaking of the rope ladder told Hiei that Keiko was already climbing up to meet her there.

"Shouldn't you be at work?" he heard Botan ask.

"Yes, I should be," Keiko tightly replied. "But this is more important. Where's Hiei?"

"He's inside, but he's just up," Botan said. "Why don't you go and sit down in the living room and I'll make you a nice cup of tea and you can talk to me–"

"No offence Botan, but I don't want to talk to you right now. I just want to talk to Hiei."

"Can I ask you why?"

"No."

"Oh Keiko, wait, please!"

Hiei hurriedly pulled on his shirt, his head popping through the collar as Keiko stepped into the doorway of the bedroom, her face even more irate and irrational than her voice had been. He nodded to her and she twitched slightly before marching up to him and slapping him over the face with what he had to assume had been her full strength: and, he was amazed to find, it actually quite hurt.

"Where the hell do you get off telling Yusuke to dump me, jack in his job and go live in demon world?" she demanded.

"What?" Hiei echoed, touching a hand to his still stinging cheek.

"You bastard!" Keiko roared.

"Whoa there, Keiko!" Botan said, grabbing Keiko's arm as she tried to swing at Hiei's face again.

"Don't try to stick up for him, Botan!" Keiko protested, yanking her arm free of Botan's hold. "Your husband told Yusuke he would get better sex with a demon woman than he does with me, and that he should leave me and his job and go and "sow his oats" in demon world for a few years! He's walked out on our relationship and his job! My parents are running around like headless chicken trying to get ready for the lunch crowd and I've just lost my boyfriend of over twenty-five years, and it's all Hiei's fault!"

"That's a little harsh, don't you think?" Botan said. "You can't blame Hiei for this! Yusuke chose to leave–"

"Are you saying that I deserve this?"

"N-no, not at all! Of course not! I was just trying to point out that–"

"Did you know about this?"

"No, I swear, I knew nothing!"

Keiko glared at Botan until she had backed up against the doorframe before turning back to Hiei.

"Fix this," she growled at him.

"What?" he echoed.

"You broke this," she said tightly. "So you better fix it. Get your ass to demon world right now, and get Yusuke back here, and tell him to stop being so stupid and selfish!"

Hiei glanced over Keiko's shoulder to see Botan frantically nodded and mouthing out to him to do what Keiko was asking.

"Fine," he sighed. "Though for the record, I'm not a tool for people to use to fix their own petty problems, least of all when it comes to their pathetic romances… Or rather lack there of…"

Keiko swiped at Hiei again but this time he ducked out of the way, opening the bedroom window and leaping out of it. He was going to do what she had asked, but only to get her out of his house so that he could go back to enjoying his wife in peace.

* * *

Hiei eventually found Yusuke sitting in the throne at the top of his tower, grinning maniacally to himself, his hair suddenly long and jagged about his head and his shirtless torso littered with blue markings. The fact that he had reverted to his full demon form – or at least, his full demon form as it was in the paradise reality – was surely not a good sign. Hiei was no expert on relationships and he had no idea what he was meant to say or do, but he was determined to think of something so that he could get back to his bed and his woman.

"What are you doing?" he asked as he approached Yusuke's throne.

"Something that I should have done years ago," Yusuke replied. "I'm going to live like Raizen did: I'm going to get myself a real slice of the action."

"You're being ridiculous," Hiei said. "You'll go back to Keiko eventually – you always do – and this time you've really pissed her off, so you're going to have to beg her for forgiveness and that's just pathetic."

"You're right again, short stuff," Yusuke agreed. "I do always go back to Keiko, she is always pissed off at me, I do always have to beg her for forgiveness and it is pathetic. But not this time. This time I've changed. I've become a new man. Nothing can stop me now."

"You're being stupid–"

"I had that valley destroyed already this morning."

"What?"

"Yeah. I think Mukuro is pissed off about it. I don't think she likes me much, but I don't really care. I don't need that sort of shit. I'm the ruler of this kingdom, I'll do what I want. I don't need her questioning my authority."

"Are you even listening to yourself? You can't just go around killing communities, whether they were made up of criminals or not, especially if the land they live on isn't entirely in your territory! That sort of stupidity could start a war, you idiot!"

"Maybe I want a war. There hasn't been a war here in centuries. Maybe it's time for change. Why did those demon world tournaments stop anyway? I said they were supposed to happen once every three years, what happened to that? I could have won one by now, and I'd be the ruler of all of demon world. If I can't prove that in a tournament, I might as well prove it in a war."

Hiei forgot to breathe for several seconds.

"Is that supposed to be a joke?" he asked when he eventually remembered again. "Because there's nothing funny about war, Yusuke."

"I'm not joking around," Yusuke replied darkly. "I'm sick of mediocre. I'm sick of settling. I'm sick of the same thing every day. I'm sick of working in that restaurant, I'm sick of Keiko and I'm sick of the living world. This is where I was meant to be all along, and making big changes in demon world feels like something I should be doing."

"It doesn't work!" Hiei yelled impatiently. "You fail! It's never enough, you get out of control, and you eventually realise it was all a big mistake and go running to Koenma begging him to let you back because you finally realise that the life you had was paradise, but your own head was too far up your ass to see it! You're already living the best life you can and being everything you were meant to be, stop fucking it up!"

"Who the hell are you to say what I'm meant to be doing with my life? It's easy for you with your perfect wife, perfect kid, custom-made house, perfect family, Mukuro there to mentor you on how to take over her kingdom – I got thrown into this job and had to figure it out all on my own! I've been feeling weird for a long time, but when we went to the lodge, I knew something had to change. Ever since then it's just been getting worse, eating away at me. No, fuck you Hiei, and fuck the living world! I'm staying here from now on!"

Hiei could hear a voice talking somewhere in the back of his mind, spilling out words of affirmation and subtle persuasion that would get Yusuke off of his throne and back to where he was supposed to be, but something more powerful was at work in his being, something that was screaming disaster and causing his body to react the only way it knew how: with violence.

"You fucking fool!" he yelled. "You're coming back to the living world with me! If you won't come by choice, I will beat you until you can't stand and then drag you back!"

"I'd like to see you try," Yusuke growled darkly. "You've become soft since you started having kids and–"

Hiei's fist had collided with Yusuke's jaw before either of them even truly realised what was happening. Hiei staggered slightly as he cleared Yusuke's face and he shortly found himself on the ground with Yusuke on his back. He lost focus for a moment and vaguely felt them both crashing through a wall and falling beyond it. He quickly grabbed at the crumbling rubble to save himself, barely managing to stab his sword in between two bricks, his weight jarring against his shoulders and the blade flexing above him, the vibrations passing painfully down the length of his arms.

Hiei looked down tentatively and saw that Yusuke had barely landed on his feet on the roof of a lower level building nearby, and was glowering up at him. Hiei did not like what appeared to be happening, but he refused to acknowledge it in any way in the vain hope that blind denial might stop it from actually being true. Increasingly though, he could hear Kurama's warning about what would happen if he did not return to his own reality: it would come to him. At first he had assumed that meant that he would become the Hiei of paradise, but as he saw Yusuke looking up at him with a strange expression on his face and a distinct golden glint in his eyes he realised that it meant something far worse, something he never wanted to have to think about, something another Hiei had already decided upon after visiting the near miss reality: if he did not return to his own reality, it would return to him: if he did not go back to the norm reality, the paradise reality would turn into the norm reality.

And the thought of being in a reality where he had managed to marry Botan and produce Monzan only to lose them both to Koenma was even worse than being stuck in a reality where Monzan did not exist at all and Botan feared and hated him.

Hiei pressed one foot against the wall for balance, pulled his sword free and then dropped down to the roof Yusuke had landed on. The situation was starting to get out of hand and he was going to have to either take a crash course in tact to talk Yusuke down from his angered stand or else continue beating him until he either could not stand or stopped acting so ridiculously. There was a border patrol vehicle heading towards Yusuke's tower, and although it was still travelling along the actual patrol route, Hiei already knew that it was going to approach the tower itself, presumably because someone had already raised an alarm – there were idiots running around in the yard below yelling about how Mukuro's second-in-command had just launched an attack on their leader, which, Hiei reasoned, was probably a fair assumption for them to have made after what had just transpired between himself and Yusuke.

"You're being incredibly stupid," he tried.

"I'm sick of people telling me how stupid they think I am," Yusuke replied. "If it's not you criticising my decisions in demon world, it's Keiko criticising me for not finishing high school or Kurama criticising me for being too hasty… I've had enough. I was born a demon, I belong in demon world. People here understand me."

"If you stay here, you will be choosing a life of needless slaughter with nothing to gain over one that actually has a purpose," Hiei insisted. "You've never wanted to stay here before, you don't want to this time, you will eventually realise that you want to go back, and it will be too late. Stop now before you fuck this up completely."

"I'm not fucking anything up," Yusuke argued. "This is the first good decision I've ever made."

"This isn't a good decision!"

"How do you know what's a good decision for me? Damn, you're so arrogant sometimes! Just because you had all the luck–"

"Luck has got nothing to do with it! It's about hard work, application and sacrifice!"

Yusuke gave Hiei a slightly strange look, and in that moment Hiei felt something sinking inside of him. He realised that what he had just said was actually quite hypocritical: after all, he was only in paradise because he had been lucky enough to get sent there, and in his own reality he had not worked hard, applied himself or sacrificed anything (except Botan to the rock monster). And the more he thought about it, the more ironic it seemed. Mukuro had warned him that there were an infinite number of alternate realities, and he had certainly seen some bizarre ones and the potential for there to be ones created from decisions he had made very early in his life all the way up to decisions he had made mere days before she used her Dividing Realities attack on him, and so the odds against him having reached the paradise reality were quite astronomically high, and yet he had managed to reach it. Twice. In only thirteen attempts.

That was lucky. In fact, that was the definition of luck.

"You're not going to change my mind on this, Hiei," Yusuke said.

Hiei knew that Yusuke meant what he had said, but he was not about to let paradise start degenerating into the norm reality – which it seemed to be doing alarmingly rapidly.

"I know this is the right thing for me to do," Yusuke added.

"And I know that this is the right thing for me to do," Hiei replied, drawing out his sword.

He saw Yusuke's eyebrows flicker and he supposed the Mazoku thought that he intended to kill him: which of course he did not. He did, however, intend to injure Yusuke as badly as need be to incapacitate him so that he could drag him back to the living world – literally. Hiei lowered himself into a fighting stance, ready to launch an attack and he saw Yusuke responding by adopting a fighting stance himself. Behind him, Hiei heard the border patrol vehicle turning off the patrol road and start towards them, which was frustrating to say the least: the last thing he needed was outside interference from some of Mukuro's soldiers. If they got involved, the already neurotic and paranoid guards around Yusuke's tower would probably start declaring it to be a full-scale invasion of their territory by Mukuro herself.

"Stay out of this!" Hiei yelled at the bodies disembarking the vehicle as it came to a halt.

He began circling Yusuke, who kept himself one step ahead of him. He did not really want to fight him under the circumstances, but it seemed like he had no other choice. The border patrol guards seemed to have taken heed of his warning as they remained by their vehicle, but apparently one of them wanted to try to be clever, as Hiei could sense someone approaching him from behind. Losing what little patience and restraint he had left, Hiei spun around and started to attack, thinking only that whoever it was that thought they could outsmart him with a cowardly sneak attack deserved to die.

Halfway through his assault Hiei stopped short, his eye doubling in size and the sight of his blood drenched sword in his hands suddenly a sickening one.

"What did you kill him for?" Yusuke asked, jogging over to join him. "He never did anything to you, that wasn't cool!"

Hiei briefly bared his teeth in an angered sneer at Yusuke before throwing down his sword and dropping to his knees by the demon he had just cut down.

"He's not dead," he said, hoping that saying it out loud might make it true.

"You just cut him into five pieces," Yusuke pointed out.

"I can put him back together again," Hiei said.

Yusuke snorted out a short laugh but Hiei failed to see what was amusing about the situation: Mukuro's famous ambassador, the one who had made demon world the place it was in the paradise reality, was lying dead at his feet, after all.

"I can fix this," Hiei insisted.

"I don't think so, Hiei," Yusuke said. "He's absolutely broken apart beyond repair. Surely you knew that would happen before you started hacking into him?"

Hiei paused, his mind slowing draining of all logic. Killing Hitoshi in paradise was arguably not as bad as killing him in the norm reality – and before he had given his famous anti-war speech – but it still seemed worryingly symbolic, and it definitely seemed to suggest that Kurama's warning was coming true. Bad feeling was bound to start running deep through demon world, and the famous peacemaker was no longer alive to diffuse it, and if a war started, with Yusuke in demon world, there was a good chance that Kurama would return there too as he had in the norm reality, leaving a crazy Shuichi behind in the living world.

But none of that ought to adversely affect Botan or Yukina, Hiei thought. Maybe he had broken a part of paradise, but it was maybe still not quite beyond all repair, and as long as Botan and Yukina – and by extension, Monzan – were still alright, everything would be okay.

And with that thought, Hiei hurriedly wiped the blood from his hands on his pants and then took off, running as fast and hard as he possibly could.

He just had to get home. Everything would be alright then.

* * *

Evidently more time has passed than Hiei had realised – perhaps because he had taken his time getting to Yusuke in demon world – because when he arrived back at the old lady's temple, he found Yukina and Monzan sitting by one of the koi ponds. Hiei took a few minutes to calm himself down before approaching them, by which point they were both fussing over something glasslike stood between them that had not been there when Hiei had first spotted them. They seemed quite calm and everything else around him seemed at ease and completely contradictory to the atmosphere he had left behind in demon world, and it strengthened his resolve to action the plan he had formulated on his way home.

"Oh, brother!" Yukina said as she spotted him. "Look, we're making ice statues."

Hiei moved closer and sat down by Yukina and Monzan, touching a hand to the top of Monzan's head as he smiled up at him adoringly.

"It's a game we play," Yukina explained. "I freeze some water into a block of ice and then Monzan melts and I freeze until we make it into something else."

Hiei felt calmed watching his sister and his son as they passed their hands over the piece of ice between them, their powers working strangely harmoniously despite being opposite, the ice gradually taking the form of something that looked like a giant bird.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Yukina asked Hiei. "Mon-Mon and I play this game a lot, we're really good at it. Ice and fire can work together to make something better… I wish I could show this to the women of the ice village. Maybe they wouldn't be so quick to judge the boys of fire born into their clan."

Yukina looked suddenly sad, and for a moment Hiei thought that she might cry.

"You weren't the first fire demon born there and you won't be the last," she eventually continued. "And you're probably the only one who ever survived the fall from the village or managed to survive beyond it. No baby, no matter how powerful, can fend for himself at birth… They just don't see it. They don't see anything outside of the confines of the village, and it's so frustrating sometimes."

"Don't worry about it," Hiei told her: though really he was barely listening to what she was saying.

"I try not to, but often I feel bad for not at least trying to help them see how things are outside of the ice village," she said with a sigh.

Hiei nodded, but again he was not really paying an attention to her words.

"Where's Botan?" he asked.

"Oh, she's in the temple," Yukina replied. "She asked me to take Monzan out here, she had something she had to do and she didn't want him to see."

Hiei nodded and got to his feet.

"You and Kuwabara are leaving this place soon, yes?" he asked.

"Yes, we are travelling again soon," Yukina replied.

"Good," Hiei said. "We're coming with you."

"Wh-what?"

Hiei turned away from Yukina to deny her the chance to question him further, since he had already made up his mind. He remembered that Yukina had said she was travelling to another part of the living world with Kuwabara, and Hiei had decided that he would go with them, taking Botan and Monzan too of course, and hide wherever it was they went to until Yusuke calmed down and Kurama stopped harassing him and trying to force him to go back to his own reality.

Inside the temple Hiei headed instinctively for the kitchen, and he could sense – without really applying any effort – several others inside the temple, though he could not hear any voices, which was quite unusual. As he passed the living room door he noticed it was shut, which was also quite unusual, but he thought no more of it and walked on, only stopping when he heard the door sliding open behind him. He turned around and saw Botan leaning out into the hallway watching him.

"There you are," he said, walking back towards her. "I think we should travel with Yukina and Kuwabara, so let's just… Are you…?"

Hiei faltered slightly as he noticed that Botan was giving him the sort of look she usually only did in one of the crappy realities: her eyes were glistening with barely restrained tears and her features were tensed in a disturbing blend of hurt and fear.

"Are you okay?" he asked her.

She slowly shook her head and moved back a step. Hiei glanced over her shoulder and saw Kuwabara standing further back in the room, looking suddenly quite stern and solemn. He looked over her other shoulder and saw a face that instantly made him both furious and afraid: it was that wild woman from spirit world again.

"Don't be upset Botan," she said, putting a hand on Botan's shoulder. "It was an easy mistake to make."

"Mistake?" Hiei echoed.

Botan stepped back again and someone else stepped forwards into her place, and Hiei found himself face-to-face with the adult-form Koenma, who looked so irate Hiei almost felt concerned.

"What are you doing here?" Hiei sneered at him.

"Taking care of spirit world business," Koenma replied. "Investigating a disturbance in the tides of fate."

"Didn't we already do this?" Hiei said. "You're talking out of your ass and nobody wants you here."

"That's your opinion," Koenma said calmly. "But sadly, that's not the opinion of everyone else."

Koenma stepped back and held out a hand at one side as though indicating something. Hiei cautiously edged through the doorway and peered into the room to see what he was referring to, his view slowly widening as he moved forwards, and the sinking feeling he had felt earlier in demon world suddenly returning to him.

At Koenma's side stood Kurama, looked particularly malevolent and displeased, and it was clear by his appearance that he had, at the very least, been discussing Hiei's true identity with Koenma. Hiei stepped fully into the room and suddenly felt a sharp tug at his shoulders and back, his shirt and bandages torn from his body before he could open his mouth to protest. As the remains of the fabric fell away, revealing the diminished remains of his wound from the Dividing Realities, Hiei suddenly felt self-conscious of the injury especially when he saw the way the others looked at it.

"Is that it?" Koenma asked.

Hiei made to answer him but stopped when he realised that the prince was actually directing his question at something beyond his left shoulder.

Hiei looked back over his shoulder to see Mukuro, looking arguably more malevolent than Kurama did.

"I'm afraid so, yes," she said to Koenma. "And by the looks of it he's been keeping it open to maintain his existence here."

Hiei snapped around again, glaring at Koenma, who gave him an almost pitying look. He tried to think of something tell him, but he had run out of lies and the sight of Botan starting to sob and Koenma promptly putting his arms around her left him only able to say one thing.

"Fuck."

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei is given the opportunity to return to his own reality by choice or be forced back, and of course ultimately ends up back in the norm reality: but not before seeing paradise completely fall apart. Back in his own reality, Hiei encounters Kuwabara and Shuichi, and is once more reminded exactly how pathetic they have both become. **Chapter 34 – Beyond Repair**

 **A/N:** And finally part 3 of the story is over, and part 4 begins!


	34. Beyond Repair

**Recap:** Basically Hiei broke paradise and found himself in an intervention with Koenma, Kurama and Mukuro having revealed his true identity to Botan.

* * *

 **Chapter 34: Beyond Repair**

"Are you sure?" Kuwabara asked.

"I know my own attacks and the wounds they create," Mukuro sternly replied. "And I already know he isn't the Hiei of this reality, he's admitted as much to me himself. What he hasn't admitted to is exactly which Hiei he is."

"He admitted it to me," Kurama said. "The first time he came here he told me where he had come from. It quite interests me that he managed to make it back here – though purely in an academic sense."

"I still don't get it," Kuwabara said. "He's still just Hiei, right?"

"Wrong," Kurama said firmly. "He may have been born the same Hiei we know, but he has created a very different life for himself, a life where he chose to distance himself from all of us without a care."

"Part of the reason I abandoned my research on the Dividing Realities attack was because of my findings," Mukuro added. "Through experimentation I discovered that there are a great many number of alternate realities for each soul, but consistently amongst that number there will always be two extremes: a utopia and a dystopia. This reality is not the utopia of Hiei's life, but it's very close. The reality he originates from, however, is the dystopia of his life, and all entirely of his own making. The only surprising thing about this is that he did want to come back here, since he seems to have come from a life where he despised everything present in this reality so much that he chose to destroy it all."

"Fate is not a malleable matter," the guardian of fate said. "And messing with it can have dire consequences. His presence here has offset the balance in both this reality and his own. He must be made to return immediately if we are to have any hope of restoring that balance."

"I gave him the chance to leave," Kurama said. "I tried to reach his conscience and I tried to be direct, but he seems quite unwilling to go."

"Perhaps that's because he realises that this is a better way of life for him," Koenma suggested. "Maybe in his own reality he had reached a point where he has realised the error of his ways, but it's too late for him to fix them."

"I wouldn't be so lenient," Kurama said. "From what he has told me about his reality, it seems quite bleak and he seems almost proud of it."

"I already know he killed my ambassador in his own reality, and before he was able to deliver his anti-war speech," Mukuro said. "And there is a war in his reality, which is why he's here. I sent him here to try to get answers to make it stop."

"His reality has more problems than the war," Kurama said.

"What about us?" Botan asked. "What about me and Monzan and the baby? Where are we?"

Hiei met Botan's eyes, the look of hurt and confusion there causing a dull pain in his chest that was not in the least helped by the sight of Koenma still holding onto her.

"Go ahead and tell her, Hiei," Kurama said.

"Fuck you, fox!" Hiei snapped, rounding on him.

He heard Botan gasp behind him but he was too infuriated to care.

"You're so self-righteous and arrogant!" he continued. "Maybe my life in that other reality is bad because of things I did, but your life is no better, and that's not my fault! You're a devious, murderous monster in my reality, and you've got no-one to blame for that but yourself! And Yusuke isn't any better, and he's acting that way here, so obviously that's nothing to do with me either! And Kuwabara's a pathetic loser, and his problems are all his own doing – okay, so the SDF wiped his memories, but it's not like he uses his powers here anyway! And Botan…"

Hiei turned to Botan, his anger slowly lessening as he looked her in the eye. He could disperse blame for the other's misery outwards, but when it came to Botan (and Yukina), Hiei could only see that he was to blame for the way things were in his own, miserable, dystopia reality.

"You don't even love me," she said faintly.

"No, I do love you," he instantly replied. "That's what I've been trying to tell you!"

She shook her head, tears spilling from her eyes soundlessly.

"My Hiei loves me," she said. "The Hiei who almost died for me, the Hiei who romanced me and married me and fathered my children loves me. But you're not him. And impersonating him is the worst possible thing you could have done. Pretending to be a man as great as he is in order to sleep with his wife and pretend to care about his son makes you the most vile and rotten soul of all. If you have even the slightest hint of a conscience left, you will get out of my husband's body, get out of our lives, and don't even think about coming back."

"You don't understand," Hiei insisted. "It isn't like that."

"You are not my husband," Botan said, clutching onto Koenma slightly tighter. "And that's all I need to understand."

"I did warn you that he would hurt you, Botan," Koenma said.

Hiei slowly moved his eyes to Koenma, readying himself to simply vent his anger against the prince in whatever form it happened to take: verbal or physical, he was beyond caring.

"Don't talk like that!" Botan snapped before Hiei could follow through.

She pushed Koenma away from herself and glared at him with arguably as much anger as Hiei had done.

"The Hiei I married would never hurt me!" she yelled. "This isn't the Hiei I married!"

Hiei flinched as she pointed at him, his anger subsiding as the reluctant realisation dawned on him that he had, officially, broken paradise to the point that it now truly was beyond repair. With Botan lost to him and everyone else fully aware that he was an imposter, his time there was limited: and even if he did stay, there was nothing left worth staying for.

"I'm not going back there," he said suddenly, unable to stop the words from leaving his mouth. "You can't make me go back."

"I beg to differ," Mukuro muttered under her breath.

"You must go back," Kurama insisted. "And not just because your continued presence here threatens the tranquillity of this dimension but because we want our own Hiei back, and until you leave, that cannot happen."

"Hey Hiei, it is the honourable thing to do, you know," Kuwabara added. "Think about Yukina, Botan and Monzan. Don't they deserve to have their brother, husband and father back?"

"I am Yukina's brother, Botan's husband and Monzan's father, you idiot!" Hiei argued.

"Did you marry Botan in your reality?" Kurama asked. "I thought you said that never happened."

Hiei gave him a hard look, though inwardly he was slightly relieved that Kurama had not also mentioned that, in his own reality, Hiei had also let Botan die.

"Do you still have the healing balm I gave you?" Kurama asked him.

Hiei thrust a hand into one pocket and closed his fingers around the small glass jar. Kurama nodded at him and he withdrew his hand again, holding up the jar for long enough to be sure that everyone in the room had seen it before flinging it at the nearest wall, where it smashed, spraying its contents over the wall in slimy splat mark.

"Well that was helpful," Koenma muttered, rolling his eyes.

"You must go back to where you came from," the guardian of fate said. "This is a very serious matter. Some things are meant to be."

Hiei pulled a face at her but apparently she did not realise how ridiculous she sounded as she remained unaffected.

"Yes, some things were meant to be!" he sneered sarcastically. "I was meant to marry her and she was meant to have my children!"

Botan's face changed and Hiei momentarily forgot about the spirit behind her.

"I see," she said. "So to you I'm just a sex toy and a baby factory. It's lucky for you that my real husband isn't here right now, because he would kill you for talking about me like that, not to mention for pretending to be him and using me for sex!"

"I never used you for sex!" Hiei quickly argued back. "When I first arrived here, you tied me up in your bed and performed oral sex on me against my will!"

Botan gasped, everyone else looked a little awkward and Koenma looked like he might pass out: though a steadying hand on his shoulder from Kuwabara kept him upright.

"You're a monster," Botan said in a low voice. "I let you into my home, I took care of you, I let you touch me and I let you touch my baby, and you lied to me about who you were the whole time! The Hiei I know – the Hiei I've always known, even back when he was nothing more than a common criminal – had more dignity than to do something so low and dishonourable as to take advantage of a pregnant woman and her young child! You should be ashamed of yourself! Is your life terrible in your own dimension?"

Hiei hesitated before he answered her, partly to allow himself to recover slightly from the wounds to his pride that her words were inflicting.

"Yes, more so than you could ever imagine," he eventually said.

"And it is that way because of decisions that you made?" she asked.

He nodded reluctantly.

"So then you deserve to be there," she said. "And you are not even worthy of our pity."

"You don't understand–"

"Hiei, you are making this harder for everyone than it needs to be and you are being extremely selfish," Kurama interrupted. "You told me that demon world is at war in your reality, and if your being here caused something like that to happen in this dimension that would be disastrous. Surely you understand why you must go?"

Hiei tried not to think about Hitoshi lying in pieces in a pool of his own blood outside of Yusuke's tower.

"I don't want to go," he said faintly.

"You must," Kurama insisted.

"But…"

Hiei looked about himself desperately in the vain hope that something might appear to make everything alright again: but all he could think of in that moment was that it was over. Even if he managed to convince Mukuro in his own reality to send him back, he would never be able to stay where he was, no matter how badly he wanted to.

Mukuro of the paradise reality had been right about him: his was the sort of heart that was better left alone, better to have never known love than to have felt it so keenly only to lose it.

"Please don't make me go back," he said, turning to Botan.

"After what you did to me?"

"I didn't actually kill you, I just let you die!"

"Wh-what?"

Hiei felt the sinking sensation in his gut tug lower down: apparently nobody had bothered to enlighten Botan on the exact circumstances of her life in Hiei's own reality.

"I'm dead in your reality?" she asked. "Because of you? But… You were always such an honourable…"

"It was an accident," Hiei said.

"It was a conscious decision," Kurama corrected him. "You let the rock monster kill her. You told me as much."

Botan gasped.

"I knew I saw doubt in your face that day!" she said weakly. "You're the Hiei who did turn away from me that day!"

Hiei shook his head though he wondered why he was bothering, since even his own mind was screaming "guilty" at him. He had run out of excuses and ideas, and so he stood still and silent for a long time, simply looking at Botan and considering the bitter irony of her fearing and hating him even in paradise. He only awoke from his thoughts when something slapped at his abdomen and when he turned his head he was only slightly surprised to see that Kurama had just scraped some of the healing balm from the wall and applied it to his wound.

"I want to see Monzan," he said to Kurama.

"He's not your son," Kurama answered him.

"Yes he is, and I want to see him," Hiei insisted. "Now!"

When nobody responded to Hiei's demand he spun around and fled from the room, distinctly feeling his skin closing over his wound as he ran down the hall towards the front door. He almost fell as he stumbled down the porch steps and turned towards the koi pond Yukina and Monzan were still sat at, blissful in their own ignorance of what was happening inside the temple.

"Monzan!" Hiei hollered.

Monzan looked up immediately and smiled at him.

"Daddy!" he called back, waving at him.

Hiei started towards him, reaching the paved edge of the walkway around the pond before suddenly everything around him changed and Monzan, Yukina and their ice statue vanished.

Hiei stopped.

The pond was suddenly devoid of koi and instead filled with algae and garbage. The paving stones had been smashed and were littered with offensive writing and explicit line drawings. The temple was mostly caved in and barely recognisable, and half of it was surrounded with "condemned building" tape. In the forest beyond the temple, the tree cover was thick and unending, the clearing where the tree-house was meant to be was non-existent and the tree-house itself of course not present.

Hiei slowly turned around on the spot he was stood on. His eyes found nothing of greatness, his ears heard only the wind in the trees and the only remotely positive thing he could feel was that, for the first time in a long time, his body felt healed and relaxed from no longer having to suffer a permanent injury.

Still feeling a little numb and disbelieving, Hiei turned back to the temple and made his way over to the part that was still standing, moving inside and trying to find his bearings. The kitchen was gone, as was half of the living room and some of the guest rooms, but most of the main hallway was still present. Hiei followed it deeper into the temple, into a part of the building where the roof and windows were hidden from the outside world beneath the rubble of the destroyed part of the building, meaning that it was still relatively in tact: though anything of value had been stripped out and what remained had been vandalised maliciously.

The room where Hiei had sent Monzan to clean their swords was still in tact, though it was empty and had a family of racoons living in the back corner. The display cabinet that had once held all the swords – the swords that Yukina had said were valuable antiques by living world standards – had been brutally smashed open and its contents long gone, including the set of swords Hiei had taken a weapon from for Monzan.

Hiei continued through the temple and out the back door, glancing at the paved area where he had sometimes seen Kuwabara's stupidly expensive car parked but now saw nothing but more rubble. He moved on, rounding the outside of the building and crossing the lawn to the forest beyond, only stopping when he reached a tree with an unusual pattern in the bark up one side of the trunk: in the paradise reality, that tree had been one of the trees his tree-house was mounted onto, and yet now it was just another tree amongst many others, with nothing startling to be seen between them.

He moved on again, trying to ignore the wind that was picking up around him. It had not been windy in paradise, but it was windy back in the norm reality, and quite cold too. He had a shirt on again and a sword at his side because he was back in the reality where he had been in possession of those things: and as he passed through the battered and broken down temple gates to the long set of worn and graffiti-stained steps beyond, Hiei felt something else he had just come into ownership of once more.

But he was not quite ready to think about that yet – neither why he still had it in his pocket nor what it contained.

He continued down the steps and along the vague path through the forest beyond until he eventually reached the roadside, where he sat down on the presumably purposely placed flat rock by the bus stop there. He could see the city beyond from where he sat and traffic was infrequently passing him by, so he considered himself to be in an obvious place, which was the best sort of place for him to be, since he now needed to get himself arrested by the spirit world Special Defence Force – again – and have them return him to demon world – again – so that he could confront a no doubt irate Mukuro – again – and commence the process of carrying out her plan to end the war – again.

Hiei took a brief moment to check on the things he felt strong enough to face: using his jagan eye he located Mukuro, in her headquarters, still fretting over maps and tactics with her senior officers, he roughly located Yusuke, and was able to confirm only that the Mazoku was still in his full demon form, still in his own territory in demon world and very much still alive, he felt that Kurama was still alive, but typically obscured and impossible to locate and finally he located Yukina, who was still alone in the ice village, sitting in the same place, in the same house, wearing the same expression.

Hiei did not bother trying to find Botan. She had said that she would not become Koenma's wife after all, but he did not want to take the risk of finding out that she had if he tried to check on her. Though he did wonder where she was, what she was doing and how she felt.

In his mind, he could still see the loving way she had looked at him in the paradise reality, and it was the most wonderful thought of all.

Hiei tensed and squinted angrily at the shadow suddenly fallen over him, seeing a bus stopped at the bus stop he was sat at. After several seconds he realised that, in accordance with human traditions, the bus driver had probably stopped because he seemed to be waiting at the bus stop. He turned his head away in disgust, and after a few seconds more, the bus drove on. Once it was out of sight Hiei turned back, starting in alarm as he saw a single human figure staggering about in a strange, confused daze as though drunk or simple. Or both.

"Oops," he said. "Guess I got off at the wrong stop again."

Hiei could not stop his face from contorting as he saw that the idiot grinning down at him was none other than Kuwabara.

"I do that a lot," he said, shrugging and grinning like a fool. "It isn't even the right bus! I keep getting on it all the time and coming out here, I don't even know why, there's nothing out here!"

Hiei continued to flicker between confusion, disbelief and disgust as he regarded the human, and he saw Kuwabara's grin slowly fade, a look of recognition starting to appear in his eyes. Of all the places to encounter Kuwabara in his own reality, Hiei had never expected to find him so close to the old lady's temple, and that, combined with the increasing look of realisation on his face started to make Hiei wonder if perhaps, in his prolonged absence from his own reality, Kuwabara had somehow remembered who and what he was.

"Hey, it's you!" he said suddenly. "You little punk! Look at you with your ripped shirt and your fake katana and your little white belts – you're just a little rebel, aren't you?"

Hiei's face dropped. Clearly Kuwabara did not remember who he was after all.

"What you been up to, little guy?" Kuwabara asked, failing to notice the flat look on condescension Hiei was giving him. "Going to school and staying out of trouble, I hope? I haven't seen you in a while: did your mom and dad ground you for your latest shenanigans?"

"I'm not a fucking child, you idiotic oaf!" Hiei snapped irritably.

"Whoa there, little guy!" Kuwabara said. "You know maybe if you sorted out that attitude of yours, got yourself a decent, manly, haircut, stopped wearing those freaky red contact lenses and got a good honest job, you wouldn't get yourself in trouble all the time and people might start treating you with a little more respect."

Hiei opened his mouth to deliver a bitingly witty retort but stopped short as Kuwabara sat down next to him.

"What are you doing?" he demanded instead.

"It's a long walk back into the city," Kuwabara replied. "I'll just wait for the next bus. I notice you didn't get on the bus there. What's wrong? Did you spend all your pocket money? No money left for a bus fare home?"

"I swear, if you refer to me as a child one more time, I will–"

"Don't worry about it, kid. I'll buy you a ticket back. I don't approve of your rebel ways, but I remember what it was like to be a kid nobody thought that much of. When I was at school, my teachers hated me, they all thought that I had a bad attitude and that I would never make anything of myself, but hey, look at me now."

Hiei felt one of his eyes twitch uncontrollably. Kuwabara was – in this reality – still an idiot in a bad suit (that was slightly too short in the arms and legs and slightly too tight across the shoulders), with a too-short haircut, a terrible excuse for facial hair dirtying his face, a dead-end job and an apartment that bordered one of the worst areas of the city.

"Just think, kid: if you work hard, you could be just like me one day!" Kuwabara added, elbowing Hiei in the ribs.

"Oh fuck you, you idiot!" Hiei snapped, pushing his arm away and standing up abruptly. "Don't you see what's happening around here? You were always the sensitive one – psychically and emotionally – and no amount of mind patching by the SDF could possibly have changed that! Can't you see it? Look around you! This is the dystopia of our lives! We're living in hell! And you're smiling about it? Are you out of your fucking mind? Maybe you're the one who should be in a straightjacket instead of Shuichi! At least he knows this life is a mess! At least he's not living in constant denial and ignorance of what's really happening around here! This life is the worst possible outcome for any of us and it's all because of–"

Hiei landed hard on his rear-end suddenly, his legs crumpled beneath him. He suddenly felt light-headed and there was a dull, throbbing pain in his chest. It was obviously exhaustion and caffeine withdrawal, he told himself.

"Hey little guy, are you crying?"

Hiei froze, his anger peaking so suddenly and so violently, his body took a moment to catch up.

"No I'm not fucking "crying", you fool!" he yelled angrily. "I do not "cry"! Do I look like the kind of soft-hearted, weak-willed idiot who "cries"? I have never "cried" in my life! Not even when I was a starving baby trapped in warding bandages thrown from a cliff and left to die!"

"Aw, you've had a tough childhood, huh little guy?" Kuwabara said softly. "I can tell by that crappy tattoo you've got up your arm there – you're in a gang, aren't you? You know, I could probably get you a job at the company I work for. It would be just as a dogsbody, but you'd be working for the most successful architectural firm in Japan–"

"You're the most successful architectural firm in Japan! Or at least, you're supposed to be! You were supposed to build me a fucking house and go and drive around in your stupid car and use your money to stop the temple up there turning into the pile of shit it now is!"

Kuwabara looked back over his shoulder with a look of genuine surprise.

"There's a temple up there?" he asked, pointing into the forest. "Really? I thought it was just forests all the way out to sea from here!"

Hiei sighed and shook his head, and he distinctly felt something wet glide over one cheek. He angrily swiped a hand at his face to clear it away, glaring threateningly at Kuwabara as he gave him a sympathetic look.

"It's rainwater," he growled.

Kuwabara looked up at the sky before giving Hiei a withering look.

"There are clouds up there, and maybe it isn't raining over there with you, but it's raining over here with me, okay?" Hiei snapped.

Kuwabara slowly stretched out one arm, his fingertips almost reaching where Hiei was sat. He turned his palm upwards and looked up at the sky expectantly, leaving Hiei wondering if he was being sarcastic or just plain idiotic.

"This is ridiculous," he said through a sigh. "Absolutely ridiculous…"

He got to his feet, took a moment to straighten his clothes as best he could and drag the back of one hand over one side of his face as it felt wet again, and he then positioned himself directly in front of Kuwabara and pulled off his bandana, glaring down into his eyes with his jagan eye. Kuwabara stared up at him in a transfixed state, and they stayed that way for some time, every passing second leaving Hiei feeling increasingly depressed: it was not that the Special Defence Force had done an excellent job of blanking Kuwabara's memories that was the problem, it was simply that Kuwabara was a very powerful psychic and, even though he was not aware of it, his powers were at work when Hiei tried to access his mind. In another twist of bitter irony, Kuwabara's own biggest strength had been turned into his biggest weakness, because as long as he was a powerful psychic, there was no way Hiei could penetrate the barriers surrounding his mind and undo the damage the Special Defence Force had done.

Hiei did wonder then though how the Special Defence Force had managed to penetrate those barriers in the first place to do the damage they had – more spirit world trickery and another reason to despise the bastards, he concluded.

With a sigh Hiei stepped back from Kuwabara and reluctantly accepted the facts: there was no undoing what had been done to Kuwabara, everything in the living world was a mess, spirit world wanted him dead and he would eventually have to go back to demon world, where he would face the one option he had left in his life to do something honourable.

He was going to have to sacrifice the lives of Yusuke and Kurama, along with his own, to end the war.

"Oh my God!" Kuwabara said suddenly, his outburst proving to be an almost welcome distraction for Hiei from his own dark thoughts. "What the hell is that?"

He slowly stood up, looking shocked, but something in his eyes looking strangely different: and for one brief and glorious moment, Hiei thought that perhaps he had, without really realising it, undone the damage he had been trying to fix after all.

The moment ended abruptly when Kuwabara poked one finger hard into the centre of Hiei's jagan eye.

"Ew!" he cried, retracting his finger and cradling it in his other hand as though he was the one that had been hurt by what he had just done. "It's wet and warm and sticky! And it looks so real!"

"It is real, you porcine prick!" Hiei snarled, cupping a hand over his aching eye. "And it's extremely sensitive, so don't poke it like a backward child who's never seen one before!"

"It even felt real!" Kuwabara wailed. "What sort of gang makes you get a big ugly dragon tattoo all the way up your arm and wear a squidgy wet eye in the middle of your forehead?"

Hiei wanted to argue, he wanted to tell Kuwabara what a truly hopeless idiot he was, but as he considered what had just happened, he suddenly found himself overwhelmed again and almost falling down again. If Kuwabara was so immune to Hiei's jagan eye and so convinced that it was not real, then clearly he was lost to Hiei completely. There was nothing that could be done to fix him: his mind was broken and so was he.

"Fuck," Hiei said, pulling his bandana back on.

He started to walk off but stopped as Kuwabara grabbed his arm.

"Hey, little guy, look, I can help you, you know," he said. "I know it must be tough if you're in a gang and you feel like you can't get out, but I could help you. You could stay at my place if you needed to, or maybe I could talk to your parents. You seem like a good kid, just misunderstood. I knew a guy like you once, I think… He didn't have a dad either."

Hiei sobered slightly.

"I never told you that I don't have a father," he said, turning his head to give Kuwabara a scrutinising glare.

"You didn't?" Kuwabara asked. "Oh… But you don't though, right?"

There was something there. The Special Defence Force had not been quite so thorough as they ought to have been, as Hiei could see and feel that there was a minute amount of Kuwabara's mind that still understood exactly who Hiei was and what his presence there meant: but it was overwhelmed by the enormous part of his mind that had been reprogrammed, and it was just beyond his reach.

"I know what it's like to have people underestimate you all the time," Kuwabara added, unwittingly picking words that Hiei rather liked. "And I know how it feels to want something so badly, to need it so badly that it takes over everything. Like you can see it, you can hear it, you can smell it and you can even taste it, but you just can't quite reach out and touch it because it's just slightly beyond your reach… I can help you, kid."

"No, rather unfortunately, you can't," Hiei said quietly. "You were my last hope for this dimension, but I can see that you've become something utterly hopeless."

Hiei pulled his arm from Kuwabara's grasp and walked on.

"Hey little guy, where are you going?" he called after him.

"I'm going to speak with the one sensible and sane person left in this world," Hiei said, smirking to himself in bitter amusement. "And rather ironically, he's so insensible and insane, they keep him in a hospital for the mentally ill."

* * *

Hiei was not sure which surprised him more: the fact that he made it to the hospital without a single member of the Special Defence Force giving pursuit or that when he forced his way in through the back entrance and to the dining hall he found Shuichi waiting for him at a table for two, laid with two trays of food.

"Are you expecting someone?" Hiei asked as he sat down in front of one tray of food.

"Yes," Shuichi replied, giving him a small smile. "I was expecting you, Hiei."

Hiei slowly narrowed his eyes.

"I heard a ruckus in the gardens as I was collecting my food tray," Shuichi added, upon seeing Hiei's scepticism. "And so I took the liberty of collecting a second tray for you in case you were hungry."

Hiei nodded, deciding that this explanation was at least a little more acceptable than the concept of Shuichi having sensed his approach using some sort of extrasensory power or ability.

"So what brings you here? Again?" Shuichi asked casually, as though remarking on the amount of rain there had been lately.

Hiei plunged one hand into his pocket and took out the object he had felt there earlier, throwing it down into the table between their trays. Shuichi carefully opened it out, eyed it over and then nodded.

"You've visited some more alternate realities?" he concluded. "And you've kept track of them on the reality chart, I see."

"I got back to the paradise reality," Hiei said, looking down at the food before him.

"Despite the unlikelihood of such a thing?" Shuichi asked.

"I broke it," Hiei confessed, before grabbing up a handful of food and stuffing it into his mouth, distracting himself with the effort of trying to chew through it all.

"Oh dear," Shuichi said with a heavy sigh. "And now you have returned here. By choice? Were you ousted from the alternate reality for the crime of breaking it or did you return here by conscious choice?"

"Ousted," Hiei managed to articulate through the food crammed between his jaws.

"Oh, I thought perhaps you had returned of your own volition. That would have been a sure indication that you had finally learnt your lesson and started to make good decisions and take responsibility for the wrongs you have done in your life, to make the effort to set them right."

Hiei shook his head. He wanted to tell Shuichi what a prick he thought he was, but his mouth was still too full to talk coherently.

"You seem different somehow though," Shuichi continued, taking full advantage of Hiei's silence. "Perhaps even though you are not here by choice, even though you do still wish for an easy way out of this mess, you realise now that there is no quick fix to be had."

Hiei tried to tell Shuichi that he was as big a nag as Kurama, but, through a mouthful of rice and tuna, it sounded more like "woo a bigger mama", which earned him a few questioning looks from those sat at nearby tables, something that seemed all the worse when Hiei considered that those giving him the questioning looks were themselves of poor mental health.

"I believe there is a way out of this mess, Hiei," Shuichi continued. "Whilst it is, quite clearly, impossible to make this reality exactly the same as the one you adore so passionately, you can at least strive towards it by improving what remains in this dimension. Find the common denominators between this reality and the one you seek to replicate, and build upon them, and there you have the raw materials to build the foundations of paradise."

Hiei swallowed hard, his eyes watering slightly as his throat was forced to expand to an unreasonable girth to pass the contents of his mouth down his oesophagus.

"A better way of life is easily within our grasp with a little application and a lot of teamwork and cooperation," he said mockingly. "We have the raw materials, we have the skills and we have the resources: and so let us build the foundations of paradise, and let us start with a simple act of goodwill."

Shuichi frowned.

"I-I don't understand," he said. "What are you talking about? What act of goodwill?"

Hiei groaned and grabbed up the plastic cup of tea from his tray. He hurriedly drank it down, still surprised and mildly amused to find that Shuichi had already taken the liberty of sweetening it to his tastes. He then stuffed as much food as he could fit into his mouth and stood from the table, nodding at Shuichi.

"You're leaving already?" Shuichi asked. "To build the foundations of paradise?"

Hiei rolled his eyes.

"Won't you need this?" Shuichi asked, picking up the reality chart and holding it out towards him.

Hiei shook his head and walked off. Apparently Shuichi was going to be as much use as he always had been: none at all. Kuwabara was broken and beyond repair and Shuichi was merely a shadow of Kurama, and fixing him into something useful was not even plausible, since he had never been anything useful to begin with, his only real purpose ever being as a human shell for Kurama to inhabit when he wanted to hide in the living world.

With nowhere else left to go, no other avenues left to explore, with nobody else left to turn to and absolutely no hope for the future, Hiei took himself outside and slowly started back towards the city. The Special Defence Force were bound to catch up to him eventually, he decided, and once they did all that was left was to confront Mukuro and listen to her yell at him about his selfishness for a little while before following through with her plan and taking the fate that he had originally thought would befall him before he began leaping between realities: an "honourable" death.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** The SDF are conspicuous by their absence, and as he waits for them to resurface, Hiei tries to force some sense back into Kuwabara, and in doing so realises that he does not actually want to face his fate just yet, that there is one thing he wants to fix first, one thing that he can actually repair. But Kuwabara remains unresponsive, and Hiei starts to lose hope: until a certain female approaches him with an unexpected "simple act of goodwill". **Chapter 35: Foundations of Paradise**

 **A/N:** And now it all the symbolism, moments of déjà vu and irony starts to come together: but probably not in the way anyone thinks it will.


	35. Foundations of Paradise

**Recap:** Hiei broke paradise and was sent back to his own reality (after Kurama forcefully healed his wound). Back in his own reality, he met Kuwabara, who still could not remember him and mistook him for a rebellious youngster and he went to see Shuichi, who said a few things Hiei didn't want to hear.

* * *

 **Chapter 35: Foundations of Paradise**

When the sky began to darken and night began to fall over the city, Hiei began to feel a little bit disappointed and rejected: he had been back in his own reality, in the living world, for several hours, and the irksome spirit world Special Defence Force had yet to find him. He had not done anything rash to draw any attention to himself, but neither had he bothered even trying to suppress his energy or presence there. He had been walking the streets expectant of a kick, energy blast, punch or shoulder tackle at any moment, but time was passing and that moment was never arriving.

And for some reason Hiei was sure he would never fathom, his travels eventually took him to Yukimura Restaurant, which seemed to be open, and Keiko's parents were clearly standing behind the counter, but the only customer they had was Kuwabara, sat alone at a table for four.

Hiei hesitated outside the restaurant window as he debated what he ought to do: to walk on or to go in and deal with brainwashed Kuwabara? When Kuwabara spotted him and started waving at him Hiei conceded defeat and entered the restaurant, slowly making his way over to the table the bumbling idiot was sat at and dropping himself into the chair opposite him.

"Hey little guy," Kuwabara greeted him. "We meet again, huh? I dunno what it is about you and the way I keep bumping into you: I sort of feel like I was meant to help you. Like fate has–"

"Don't talk to me about fate," Hiei cut him off. "She's a bitch and a liar and a fraud."

"…Okay… Well how about this then: my name's Kazuma. What's yours?"

"Hiei. Which you would know if you hadn't let the SDF wipe your memories like the idiot that you are."

"Hiei, that's a strange name."

"You're named after a bush."

"…What?"

Hiei sighed.

"Yukina," he said.

"…You what?" Kuwabara echoed.

"Botan," Hiei tried. "Koenma. Toguro. Sensui… Yusuke Urameshi."

"…Are they members of the gang you're in?"

"Do you remember going to high school?"

"Of course I do!"

"Do you remember your friends there?"

"Some of them."

"What about… What's your happiest memory?"

"…Why? You sure are a weird little punk…"

"What is your happiest memory, idiot?"

"I'm not an idiot – and, though I don't really see why you would care, my happiest memory was the day I got Eikichi, my cat. I remember picking her from a litter of kittens in the pet store."

"Fantastic. Tell me all about it."

"…What?"

"Why did you pick that cat? Why not one of the others?"

"Um… Because she was the prettiest?"

"Great. Can you remember how you felt when you first held her?"

"Sure."

"Hold onto that thought."

"Um, okay, but I – oh God no, not that again!"

Hiei, who had just pushed his bandana up into his hair, focused his jagan eye on Kuwabara once more, in one last, desperate attempt to reach through to something. Although he was an expert on the use of his jagan eye for its most basic functions, he had never bothered mastering the more complex tricks it could perform: though he did vaguely remember something about a technique called "mental cleansing", where the jaganshi would lure the victim into recalling a clear memory in great detail as a means to gain better access into the recesses of their minds.

But, as the technique required patience, people skills and a knack for utilising fancy words, Hiei had, needless to say, never bothered mastering it. In fact, until that very moment, he had never even bothered trying to use it before.

Hiei almost felt vindicated when his strategy failed – it was another victory for violence over diplomacy, as far as he was concerned – but as he ended his attempt and he heard Keiko's parents collapsing behind the counter, he saw something that made him panic: Kuwabara's sister was suddenly standing in the middle of the restaurant, glaring at him in disbelief, apparently as immune to the effects of looking directly at a jagan eye as her brother was.

"Hiei?" she asked.

"Fuck," he grunted, leaping from his seat and fleeing the restaurant.

As he ran from the restaurant, it very quickly occurred to Hiei that, up until the moment he had noticed Kuwabara's sister watching him, he had wanted to be caught by someone who would report him to spirit world or else open a breach in the Kakai Barrier for him, so running in blind panic from just that opportunity was nothing short of ludicrous. He started to slow down and eventually stopped just beyond the city limits. He looked back at the city, waiting for a flash of light or the grey and blue of a Special Defence Force uniform, but neither came.

As he stood watching the city, Hiei felt something wet on his face again.

"Fucking rain," he grumbled, looking up at the immaculately clear sky.

* * *

Hiei spent his first night back in his own, shitty, reality sleeping in a rather short tree by a roadside, mostly expecting to be rudely awoken at some point during his sleep by someone looking to arrest or else simply kill him. When he awoke to a bright sky, the position of the sun indicating that it was beyond mid-morning, and he found himself without handcuffs and still in possession of his head and all his other vital organs, he felt strangely lucky. He let himself fall to the ground before dragging himself to his feet, yawning, scratching his crotch, spitting and then sneering at the passing busload of women all gaping at him in horror.

His first instinct was to get some coffee, but he reasoned that it was time to stop humouring that addiction, since it no longer served a valid purpose. And besides, he did not have much longer left to live anyway, so prolonging it by indulging in the agonies of sleep depravation seemed pointless. He had intended to rise early and search out Kuwabara – assuming that he made it through to the morning alive and yet to be captured, which of course he could now see that he had – but he supposed that this was perhaps easier, as Kuwabara would inevitably be at his desk by that time of day, and so easier to hunt down and harass.

Hiei had decided that, until he got sent back to demon world, (or sent to spirit world prison or just simply executed) he was going to keep trying to unlock Kuwabara's vanquished memories. It was a challenge, and it was one that might prove worthwhile overcoming, since Yukina would need a strong friend to protect her after the war ended and Botan upheld her promise to collect Yukina from the ice village and return her to the living world.

As he walked back to the city – because he had no reason to rush, and at a walking pace he was more likely to be noticed and stopped, which was what he ultimately wanted – Hiei thought about what sort of place the norm reality really was. His first thought was that it had been quite odd to see Kuwabara at the bus stop by the old lady's temple. Not because he was at that location, rather because it had been early evening and he seemed to have finished work for the day, which was unusual for the over-worked Kuwabara of the norm reality. His second thought was that he really quite wanted to know where Botan was and what she was doing, but he was too cowardly to check. And it was out of cowardice that he did not check: he had seen her running into the arms of Koenma one too many times, and that bitch of fate had said "some things are meant to be", and obviously she had been referring to the fact that Botan was meant to always be with Koenma.

Maybe it was for the best.

Hiei hated – truly, completely, despised and detested – the idea of his wife with that miserable little snot-rag of a man, but also he knew that Koenma was extremely fond of Botan, and Botan herself (in Hiei's own reality) had only had good things to say about him, even when she had been upset to learn that he would never have children with her. They were always happy together – ecstatically so in that one reality Hiei had visited briefly where they had been long-time lovers – and, apart from disappointing her by having children with another woman, Koenma would never do anything to hurt her.

And so, since he was destined to die and he might never know what had or would become of Botan, Hiei tried to tell himself that her being with Koenma was the best thing that he could hope for, because it would mean that Botan would never be lonely and she would always be loved.

It was a nice theory, and surely Kurama and/or Shuichi would be proud of him for thinking of it: but it was shit, and Hiei still wanted Botan for himself after all.

Fuck Koenma.

At the building Kuwabara worked in Hiei boldly made his way through the front entrance, ignoring the man at the reception desk who demanded to see his security pass, instead aiming himself for the stairwell to start up to the floor Kuwabara would be on. The man from behind the desk darted out towards him and Hiei stopped abruptly: but not because of the frantic man trying to block his path, rather because there was something hanging on the wall at his side, barely visible on the edge of his vision, something that was very familiar, and something he had never seen in the paradise reality, though he was sure had been present in more realities than his own.

It was a poster, advertising a competition to win a contract to build a house for a famous singer who liked wooden houses.

Hiei had seen it before of course, and he could even vaguely remember having a conversation with Kuwabara about it at one point. And the man pictured on the poster was the same one that had been pictured on the cover of that book Yukina had been reading in the paradise reality, so Hiei finally understood why he had looked familiar. After worrying that he had been turning into that other Hiei, he now realised that, in this instance at least, it had simply been a case of confusion between realities.

There was probably something else significant about the poster but Hiei did not really care what: he was mostly thinking about how it seemed to illustrate that he never had been acquiring memories of that other Hiei or turning into him in any way, rather he had simply been thinking about and feeling things from other realities. And that was a relief, because he had never liked that other Hiei: that other Hiei who was now no doubt back in paradise, basking in a glorious life that he had done nothing to deserve.

Hiei picked his way around the pathetic human trying to stop his passage to the stairwell, and as he reached the stairs themselves, another interesting and almost darkly amusing thought occurred to him: back in the paradise reality (and only the day before) Mukuro had said that it was not the ultimate utopia existence, only very close to it. Hiei had considered the paradise reality to be so perfect that it ought to have been the "utopia of his life", but, according to Mukuro, that was not the case. What then, he wondered, was the "utopia of his life"? Was it something that was only perfect in Hiei's own life, or did it affect everyone else around him too – as the changes in his life had in the paradise reality – he wondered?

Hiei eventually reached the large open-plan office area Kuwabara's desk was located in and, as expected, Kuwabara was sat at his desk as loyally as ever: though he did look a little more relaxed and rested than he usually did when sat there.

"Hey little guy!" Kuwabara greeted Hiei as he caught sight of him approaching. "Did you change your mind about the job? Maybe you should have put on a clean shirt first, y'know. Or at least one that wasn't all ripped like that…"

"Listen idiot, I need you to pull yourself together and be strong for Yukina," Hiei answered him, stopping by his desk.

"…What?" Kuwabara asked, his smile vanishing to be replaced by a confused frown.

"I need to know that she won't be exploited after she leaves the ice village, and you're the only human in this world strong enough to actually give her the sort of protection she'll need," Hiei reluctantly admitted.

"Damn it Hiei, why can't I ever have a normal conversation with you?"

Hiei faltered slightly upon hearing Kuwabara address him by his name: but then he remembered that he had told Kuwabara his name the day before, so his use of it was not indicative of a partial return of his memories, but rather a continuation of the new life he now led.

"You're such a strange and moody little guy!" Kuwabara added.

Hiei took a deep breath and surprised himself by simply sighing it out again. There was no point in arguing with or even just insulting Kuwabara: he had no concept of who either of them truly were and he could not remember Yukina or his feelings for her, so it seemed like a waste of energy to bother mocking him.

"I'm going for lunch," Kuwabara said, cutting into his thoughts again. "If you're moody because you're hungry, I'll buy you lunch. You look like you need a good meal, you're smaller than my neighbour's twelve year old daughter."

Hiei bared his teeth but again said nothing. Instead he followed Kuwabara out of the office again, waiting until they were out on the street and Kuwabara had begun unchaining his bicycle before talking again.

"If I say Yukina, Yusuke Urameshi, Kurama, Genkai and Botan to you, do you understand anything about any of them?" he asked.

Kuwabara slowly stood up, blinking blankly at Hiei.

"…Isn't Yukina a type of plant?" he asked.

Hiei growled in frustration.

"Forget about your lunch, come with me instead," he said.

"Oh no, I can't play with you right now, little guy," Kuwabara said gently. "I have to collect my lunch orders and get back to the office with them. Maybe you should go to school today anyway, study hard and–"

"Get on your fucking bicycle and follow me, or I will fucking murder you!" Hiei yelled, tearing his sword out of its sheath and pointing it at Kuwabara's chest to underline the severity of his threat.

Kuwabara's eyes grew large for a few seconds before slowly thinning, his eyebrows lowering over them into a scowl that almost rivalled one of Kurama's in its intensity. Hiei thought that Kuwabara might actually fight him then, and maybe that would be a very good thing, because maybe, when his life was in danger, he would instinctively summon his spirit sword to defend himself and maybe accessing his powers again would help remind him who he was.

"I don't have any money on me, little guy," he said quietly. "The lunch order gets put on a tab for the company."

"I'm not mugging you, idiot," Hiei growled back.

"And I don't have any rich relatives, so there's no point taking me hostage," Kuwabara added.

"I'm not taking you hostage," Hiei replied.

"…And if you try anything else – like anything, y'know, funny – I'm gonna fight back."

Hiei's face dropped.

"I'm not trying to rape you either, you infinite fool!" he snapped irritably. "Just get on your stupid bicycle and follow me, because I need to try one last thing to make you remember!"

"…I don't really know why you keep following me around, little guy," Kuwabara began. "But you should know that–"

"Just do it!" Hiei cut him off.

Kuwabara slowly eased his bicycle out of the stands and climbed onto it, his eyes never leaving Hiei as he did so.

"And don't even think about trying to get away from me," Hiei warned him.

Kuwabara gave him a strange look and Hiei realised that he had no other choice but to trust the idiot. He started to move and was pleased to see that Kuwabara did follow him, despite being very obviously reluctant to do so. Hiei gradually quickened his pace, pushing until it was clear that Kuwabara was struggling to keep up with him. He led him out of the city and up and around the long, winding road to the bus stop they had met at the day before, there turning off the road and starting through the forest. Kuwabara managed to keep up with him until about halfway through the woods, at which point the path was too overgrown and rocky for his bicycle, and so Hiei waited as patiently as he could whilst Kuwabara chained his vehicle of choice to a suitable tree and then they continued on foot.

When they finally reached the temple steps Kuwabara stopped, his eyes slowly travelling up their length.

"Whoa," he said. "There really is an old temple up here, huh?"

"Yes, now let's go," Hiei replied, starting up the steps.

"Up there?" Kuwabara echoed in disbelief. "But I'm exhausted already! I just cycled all the way here and walked all the way through that forest… Though I guess you've been running all this time, you must be even more exhausted than I am, and if you still have the energy to get up those steps after all that, you really must be determined about whatever is up there, and that kinda makes me want to see it too… So let's go."

Hiei frowned, confused by Kuwabara's logic: though when he saw that it had been enough to send him moving briskly up the stone stairs, his long legs managing two steps in each stride, he gave up trying to understand his motivation, instead simply following after him.

At the top of the steps Kuwabara stopped again, first looking up at the broken gate above and around them before looking across the expanse of lawn at the remains of the temple. His expression was quite neutral, and when he started to walk onwards Hiei let him go, simply following after him as patiently as he could in the hope that he might find something himself that sparked a memory of who and what he had once been. He walked up to the front entrance and paused there for a little while before turning and walking around the outside of the broken down part of the temple, picking his way past the sticky remains of the ponds and flinching slightly when he inadvertently disturbed a disgruntled racoon.

"Is this where your gang hangs out, Hiei?" he asked as they passed a particularly offensive phrase spray-painted over the remains of one of the exterior walls.

"Look at this instead," Hiei tried, pointing at a raised area of the garden.

Kuwabara turned to the area Hiei was pointing at and started towards it. Hiei followed him all the way to the end of a raised walkway, only then realising what it represented.

"This is terrible," Kuwabara said quietly, kneeling down by the broken headstone. "The people who broke this shrine should be put in prison!"

Hiei had never really liked humans in any way, but he had always admired the old lady's strength, courage, determination and dignity, and the sight of what had become of her grave was sickening to behold. Kuwabara looked quite pale, and Hiei wondered if what they had just found might be the trigger he had been looking for to break him.

"That's disgraceful," Kuwabara said, standing up again and shaking his head. "Somebody really ought to restore this temple and this shrine."

Kuwabara walked off again, and Hiei watched him go, realising that the shrine had not been enough to reach Kuwabara's old memories, despite it having been shocking enough that even Hiei was still tense and angered by it. And if the sight of Genkai's grave desecrated was not enough to reach Kuwabara, it was arguable that anything else ever would be.

Hiei sighed, moving on again and rejoining Kuwabara as he moved through the rooms of the temple that were still standing. Together they passed through many rooms that they had both once been in when the temple had still been well-kept, even in their own reality. They passed the broken remains of the display cabinet Hiei had already been angered by and eventually reached a room with a hole in the floor that seemed to have happened gradually, as the result of a leak in the roof slowly rotting away the floorboards.

Hiei wanted to give up at that point, but when Kuwabara dropped onto all fours and began prying back the partially rotted floorboards his interest was once more peaked. He watched in vague amusement as the idiot recklessly ripped up sections of the floor, damaging his own ugly suit in the process before dunking his head and shoulders down into the foundations, his hands digging down in search of something. After a few minutes of frantic scratching about, he resurfaced with a metal box between his hands, shuffling around on his knees to face Hiei.

"Check this out," he said, placing it down on the ground. "It's still locked. I wonder if there's a way to bypass the lock and –"

Kuwabara stopped abruptly and made a small yelp as Hiei made a low swing with his sword, slicing the box in half, its contents spilling out onto the floor around them. Hiei's impetuous response had damaged some of the items inside the box, but the rest were still surprisingly in tact. Unfortunately however, all that the box had seemed to contain was a mass of trinkets of arguable value.

"Hey…" Kuwabara muttered, carefully moving aside some of the little pieces of crap. "That's weird…"

He uncovered a single photograph and gingerly picked it up, frowning heavily at the faded image it depicted. Hiei edged closer and craned his neck to peer down at it too, seeing a photograph that he could vaguely remember being forced to be a part of many years before.

"That's me…" Kuwabara said, pointing at the younger version of himself grinning idiotically at the back of the photograph. "And that looks like… You?"

Kuwabara glanced back and forth between the picture and Hiei.

"But how is that possible?" he asked. "I don't ever remember getting my photo taken with you! Or any of these other people! Oh hey, wait, that's Keiko!"

Hiei thought that perhaps seeing himself with the others might kick-start Kuwabara's memories: but what he said next almost made Hiei slap his own forehead in despair.

"And that's Natsuko!" he said, pointing at Botan.

"Forget it," Hiei sighed. "This is obviously pointless. In fact, I don't even know why I bothered wasting my time trying again."

Hiei began walking at an unhurried pace back out of the temple, all the while wondering when the Special Defence Force would finally catch up to him: they were certainly slow on the uptake this time. Ridiculously slow. Almost suspiciously slow. But mostly just infuriatingly slow, because now all that Hiei wanted to do was get back to demon world.

As he heard Kuwabara exiting the temple behind him Hiei looked back over his shoulder and saw something that seemed quite bizarre: he was stuffing the photograph he had just recovered into his shirt pocket.

Not that it made any difference. As long as he could not remember who he was, there was no hope for him anyway.

And with that thought, Hiei took off for the city again, moving at full speed and leaving Kuwabara and the temple far behind him.

* * *

Hiei sat on a hilltop on the outskirts of the city and watched the sun set. He had survived a day and a half in the living world of his own reality without anyone from spirit world or demon world finding him there. He decided that, if he was still there by the next morning, he was going to go on a violent rampage of destruction through the city, since that was bound to get spirit world's attention, and this time he actually wanted them to apprehend him and send him back to demon world. He had already accepted what his fate there would be, though he still did not like it. He had given up caring about his own demise, but he still did not like the idea of knowingly killing Yusuke and Kurama, despite what they had become since the war began. It was a suitably shitty thing to have to do to end his life in such a shitty dimension.

He wondered if he ought to do something a little less shitty first. Maybe, he thought, after the Special Defence Force sent him back through the Kakai Barrier, he might have time to rescue Yukina himself. He did not really like the thought of Botan going to demon world, even if the war did end, and, as Yusuke had pointed out to him in the paradise reality, he did not like to leave things to chance, and hoping that Botan would manage to even find the ice village was taking a pretty big chance. Maybe he would go and rescue her first and take her to a portal to the living world: she was weak enough that she would be unaffected by the Kakai Barrier and could pass through it without him.

But what about when she got to the other side? There should be someone there to take her somewhere safe where she would not just be hunted down and sent back again. But where was safe? And who could he ask: Kuwabara could not remember Hiei or Yukina, much less understand the importance of keeping Yukina hidden in the living world.

It would be better if Kuwabara could remember, Hiei thought. If that big idiot could remember who he was and how to use his powers, he could create an opening in the Kakai Barrier for Hiei to pass though, get Yukina and take her back to Kuwabara and the living world. Then Kuwabara could hide her safely until Hiei had carried out Mukuro's plan and ended the war in demon world, at which point Yukina would probably be free to live in the living world anyway. Probably.

Everything was a risk. Everything came down to chance, and Hiei hated that more than anything else. But he could not escape the deep sense of guilt and the knowledge that he could do something for his sister at least. Kuwabara was a lost cause: he would probably never recover his memories or powers, and he was far too late to become the successful businessman he had been in the paradise reality – the hideous house on legs in the norm reality was proof enough of that. Yusuke was too far gone: he had long ago reverted to his full demon form and sustained it for several years, and if his behaviour in the paradise reality had been any indication, apparently he had always had a hidden desire to live that way anyway, and there was no chance of him returning to his human body, least of all becoming a chef at the failing Yukimura Restaurant of the norm reality. Kurama was also locked into his full demon form, his human form lost to Shuichi, who was destined to spend the rest of his existence being an eccentric and obnoxious prick: Kurama would never return to the living world and never adapt to life there again and so he was lost too. Botan had, Hiei assumed, returned to her life as a ferry girl, and she had told him that she would never like him, so there was absolutely no way he could ever convince her to give up her ferry girl duties, take a human trial and become his wife: and besides, Monzan was supposed to be four years old already and Botan was supposed to be pregnant again, so he had missed the opportunity to make that happen too.

And that just left Yukina. Yukina was the most innocent of them all, and of them all, the only one truly blameless for her own current unfortunate circumstances. She was also the least able to help herself because she was so meek and mild-tempered, and even if taking her to the living world would mean her living in that awful apartment with a Kuwabara who could not even remember her, it was still a better existence than her slowly rotting away in the ice village.

Hiei had to do something: this, he supposed, would have pleased Shuichi, because he was making a good decision based on something he had learned in the paradise reality.

But how he was going to even begin the rescue and hide operation was another matter entirely. He would need the help of Kuwabara at the very least, and even then it was debatable how much he could achieve.

Suddenly Hiei realised that he was no longer alone on the hilltop.

He tensed slightly until he was sure that the presence he could sense was only human and not a pesky spirit world Special Defence Force soldier or a weak demon that had managed to pass through the Kakai Barrier and was looking for a partner in crime. He then turned his head to look back over his shoulder, slightly taken aback to see Keiko walking towards him. Of all the humans who might have approached him at that moment, she was the last one he had ever expected to see: especially since she was completely alone and a long way from anyone else.

She saw him looking her way and she did a double-take in his direction but did not break her pace, continuing towards him, her face looking strangely determined and slightly annoyed. As she got within easy speaking distance of him she pulled something from her coat pocket and Hiei realised that his mind was about to be made up with regards to how he would get back to demon world: she was holding up a spirit world communication mirror.

Hiei turned away from her again. Of course she was going to call spirit world to come and catch him, it was what she had done before in this pointless reality, and it was no doubt what she would now do again. Of course, she could have done it from far away, she had not actually needed to seek him out and do it in front of him. He wondered why she had sought him out. He wondered how.

How had she known where he was?

Hiei turned his head sharply as something landed with a light clatter at his side. Keiko had inexplicably dropped the communicator onto a piece of hard ground nearby where he was sitting. He looked up at her for an explanation, seeing her face still hardened and determined, the expression even more intense when seen close-up.

And then she did something that really made no sense: she stomped her heel into the communicator, smashing it against the ground.

Hiei glared at Keiko's booted foot as she ground her heel into the remains of the communicator. She then threw down another device – clearly of spirit world origin – and sat down in front of it, a short distance from Hiei's side.

"The SDF are looking for you," she said, keeping her eyes on the device in front of her. "They aren't in this world any more, but before they left, they gave me this compass and that communicator, and they told me that if this thing started going off, I had to call them and tell them where you were."

She touched a button on the device in front of her and it began flashing and beeping maniacally, a floating arrow on its face turning to point directly at Hiei.

"They said it was programmed to pick up on your individual demonic aura," she continued, picking up the compass. "They put a piece of your hair in it so that it would find you."

She flipped open the compass and tipped out a small locket of Hiei's hair, which he watched fritter to the ground in mild curiosity.

"They got it from you when they arrested you the first time around," she explained. "It allows them to close in on your signal, and they said that, without it, the compass wouldn't really work because there are still a lot of weaker demons in the living world, and the compass would only ever focus on the closest aura, not the strongest one."

Hiei's face started to contort in increasing confusion and mounting fascination as Keiko produced a lighter from one pocket and flicked at it to produce a flame.

"I hate spirit world," she said quietly, moving the flame to the chunk of Hiei's hair on the ground. "They took Yusuke and turned him into something awful. He was just a normal kid before they came along. They made him fight all those monsters, they brought out his inner demon, and all of that made him what he is now, and for that I hate them. And when they saw what they had turned him into, they even tried to kill him. They're such bastards."

Hiei's face twisted further at both Keiko's use of profanity and the smell of burning hair as she proceeded to reduce his hair sample to ash with her lighter.

"I hate you too of course," she said, snapping shut the lighter and returning it to her pocket. "You tried to turn me into a demon the first time I met you, you nearly killed Yusuke that day, you fought recklessly during the Dark Tournament – sending out that black dragon and nearly killing everyone else around you – you were unreliable and unpleasant and you let Botan die, and that was just plain vile, because Botan was like the glue that held you all together. She had to keep the order of balance between the demons of the team, the humans and Koenma, and it was never easy for her, but she did it and she did it well. Without her, I never would have known what Yusuke was really up to."

Keiko buried the ashes of Hiei's hair sample beneath some loose dirt and then put the compass down on top of the communicator and thrust her heel into it, destroying it and smashing the communicator into even smaller fragments.

"I hate you Hiei," she said, her eyes still on the damage she had just caused. "But I hate spirit world just a little bit more because of what they did to Kuwabara and Yukina. I don't know where Yukina is now, but I see Kuwabara every day and it's pathetic and I hate it. I hate what's become of him even more than I hate what's become of me. And so does Shizuru."

Keiko sighed and then turned her head to look Hiei in the eye for the first time since her arrival.

"And he told me you've been hanging around him a lot this last day or so," she said. "And Shizuru caught you trying to use your jagan eye to hypnotise him. We realise that you're trying to help him get his memories back. We don't really understand why, because you always really, really hated him, but actually, we don't really care what your reasons are, since we want the same thing as you, and if you can make it happen, we support you."

"…What?" Hiei muttered.

"We support you," Keiko repeated. "We can see what you're trying to do, and we want to help you. We still don't like you, but we figure that spirit world won't ever undo what they did to Kuwabara, but if you can, that makes you a better ally than they are. So I told Koenma that you're not in the living world right now. I told him I'm using the compass to check every hour of every day, and that I'll call him as soon as I see anything out of the ordinary."

Keiko turned to look at the broken spirit world devices and Hiei copied her actions, seeing the tangled mess of now completely unusable technology, which served to underline what she appeared to be saying to him.

"I've got the SDF off your back, Hiei," she said, turning back to him again. "Tell me what else I need to do and I'll do it."

Hiei turned to face her, a strange feeling passing over him as his eyes met hers, the determination and conviction shining in her previously dulled over and lifeless dark eyes casting a small ray of hope over his otherwise pathetically bleak situation.

"Let's do it Hiei," she said. "You and me and Shizuru. Let's get Kuwabara's memories back. I'll do whatever it takes. I'll lie to spirit world as many times as it takes."

Hiei smiled in spite of himself.

"Let us build the foundations of paradise, and let us start with a simple act of goodwill," he said, before laughing at the sheer irony.

"What?" Keiko asked, smiling herself.

"Never mind," he replied, rising to his feet. "There is something else you can do for me today."

"Sure, anything," she said, standing up in front of him.

"I need a place to stay. I need to hide in a human household, ideally one with several other humans in it, just in case the SDF do come looking for me. They won't approach me if I'm surrounded by humans. I need to stay at your house."

"No, no way."

Hiei's face dropped.

"I mean, there's no space, I live with my parents," she added. "But I do know somewhere you could stay instead. It's a building full of humans and it's probably the safest place for you to be."

Hiei sobered then: he had known that things could not go well for him, and that brief moment of hope he had experienced had ended already. Obviously Keiko was going to make him stay somewhere quite awful.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** (It's so obvious where Hiei will be staying, I'm not even going to bother putting it in here: even the chapter title makes it obvious). Hiei, Shizuru and Keiko set about planning how they will help Kuwabara get his memories back, but they struggle to find answers, and out of desperation, Hiei consults Shuichi and Hiei makes another new ally who may be able to help him on his quest. **Chapter 36: Show of Humility**


	36. Show of Humility

**Recap:** Hiei decided that he would stay in the living world and fix Kuwabara so that he could rescue Yukina from the ice village, but several attempts to reach Kuwabara's lost memories all failed him. When he was starting to give up hope, Keiko approached him and told him she had deterred the SDF from finding him and that she and Shizuru wanted to help him fix Kuwabara.

* * *

 **Chapter 36: Show of Humility**

"Eikichi, Eikichi, I love my little Eikichi! Who's a pretty girl? Eikichi is!"

Hiei growled and thinned his eyes as he watched Kuwabara rub the side of his face against the greying, obese, toothless cat suspended from his enormous hands.

"Who's the prettiest kitty in this apartment?" he asked.

"It's the only "kitty" in this apartment!" Hiei pointed out. "I hope… Oh fuck, are there more?"

Hiei looked about himself, checking behind the sofa, on top of the fridge and inside the kitchen cupboards for any additional cats that might be lurking nearby.

"No, it's just something I like to say to her," Kuwabara explained.

Hiei sighed in relief and closed the microwave door.

"And even if there were, I wouldn't keep them in there," Kuwabara added, eying Hiei over as though he had just done something offensive.

Hiei collected his cup of coffee from the kitchen worktop and moved into the living room – which was actually the same room as the kitchen anyway, and also doubled up as the bedroom – taking himself to the wall furthest from the fold-out bed Kuwabara was apparently going to sleep in that night and settling himself down onto the floor. He figured it was the safest place for him to be, and he began greedily drinking down his disgustingly strong coffee, hating himself for succumbing to its addictive charms and loving the way his headache melted away with every mouthful. He had yet to figure out a way to get Kuwabara's memories back, and he did not really know if Keiko would be able to help him any other than to keep the Special Defence Force away from him as she had already begun to do: but he was glad to have a little more time before facing his fate in demon world.

Hiei spat out the last mouthful of his coffee as Kuwabara – at this point dressed only in a ragged vest and overly loose boxer shorts – sat down on the end of his fold-out bed, affording Hiei an explicit view directly up the insides of his underwear. And, as though to add insult to injury, the smelly old cat started climbing onto his lap, plucking at his legs with its fully-extended claws.

"Get this thing off of me!" Hiei demanded.

"Aw, I think she likes you, Hiei!" Kuwabara replied.

"Get it off of me!" Hiei yelled.

"She's just showing her affection," Kuwabara said. "Cuddle her!"

"I'm going to throttle her if you don't get her off of me right now!"

"Gees, calm down, you little squirt! She's just trying to be friendly!"

"I don't need a friend! And if I did, I wouldn't pick one with such a hairy ass!"

"Okay, I've got her already!"

Kuwabara bent down and carefully extracted the cat from Hiei's lap, creating small pulls in the fabric of his pants as it tried to stubbornly hold on. Hiei sighed and started to relax until he realised that the view of Kuwabara in his underwear was as bad from behind as it was from the front.

"And get some damn elastic in your underwear!" he shouted after him as he carried his cat back to his bed. "I can see the crack of your ass from here!"

"…Maybe you should just stop looking at my ass," Kuwabara muttered.

Hiei growled angrily before turning to face the wall when the sight of Kuwabara cradling his cat like a baby and making kissy faces at it became too much to bear: Kuwabara in his underwear making kissy faces at a cat was always bad, but Kuwabara in his underwear and with a jagged little beard making kissy faces at a cat was utterly repugnant.

"Goodnight, Hiei!" Kuwabara called over to him. "If you change your mind about pillows or a blanket–"

"Shut-up and go to sleep!" Hiei cut him off.

Kuwabara started asking his cat – in a loud whisper – if it thought the little punk was being grumpy, and Hiei had to bite back the urge to produce his sword and turn both of them into a kebab. He lay down on the ground, facing the wall, and waited for Kuwabara to fall asleep. He was hoping that he might be able to get inside the human's mind during his sleep, though that was, unfortunately, the only plan he had, and it was highly unlikely to succeed.

He wondered if he was wasting his time: but the memory of Yukina, alone and miserable in the ice village, kept him motivated to continue. He was still not really sure how he would rescue her. He had only really thought as far as returning Kuwabara's memories, having him open a breach and then going through it to get to demon world, the ice village and ultimately Yukina. He had not even considered possible complications such as traversing war-torn demon world to get to the ice village, getting past all the other ice maidens to get to Yukina and then crossing back over war-torn demon world with Yukina: but he supposed those details would iron themselves out nearer the time. Somehow.

Though not planning on how he intended to deal with those things was leaving rather a lot to chance, and Hiei did not like leaving things to chance.

But equally, there was no way of knowing what problems and complications he may encounter of his way to and from the ice village, and it was a chance he was going to have to take in order to secure Yukina's freedom. He did not really relish the idea of having a stand-off with the elders of the ice village – which would probably be inevitable when they sensed his approach – but he was going to have to do whatever it took to succeed.

Once he was sure that Kuwabara was asleep – mostly because of all the snoring – Hiei carefully crossed the room, getting as close as he could stand to be to Kuwabara, and he began trying to probe into his mind. Straight away he encountered the same problems he had before: Kuwabara was simply too strong, even though he was not consciously aware of having such powers. Hiei could not even see exactly how his memories had been closed off from the rest of his mind to work out how to undo the damage – undoing the damage might be an easy task after all – but until he could find a way to overcome Kuwabara's own powerful psyche, he was stuck. Kuwabara was, literally, a prisoner of his own strength, and Hiei had no idea how to overcome that.

With a sigh of defeat Hiei gave up and started back across the room to where he had been laid down. The cat had taken advantage of the warm spot he had left behind on the floor and taken his place, and was giving him a warning look as he tried to approach it. Not wishing to deal with a screaming, scratching animal that he could not kill – lest it upset Kuwabara and cause total chaos – Hiei took himself to the couch, which made a surprisingly adequate bed for him due to his diminutive stature. He lay down on his back, using his hands as pillows and looked up at the ceiling, his top lip curling as sounds of lewd activities from the apartment above leaked down to him, apparently happening directly above where he was lying.

Mukuro was right: this was the dystopia of his existence.

* * *

The next morning as Kuwabara readied himself to leave his apartment to go to work, Keiko appeared at his door looking for Hiei, who gladly went with her, if only to escape the torture of watching Kuwabara shamelessly drying himself off in the middle of the living room whilst singing to his cat.

"No progress then?" Keiko asked Hiei as they walked out of Kuwabara's apartment block.

"No…" Hiei vaguely replied, looking about himself curiously. "This isn't a very safe part of the city, you know. Did you come here on your own?"

"Your concern is flattering and…" Keiko began, slowly frowning. "A little bit creepy and unexpected, but not necessary. I've got the toughest resident of this city here with me."

Hiei turned to Keiko questioningly and she pointed to something a short way down the street. He followed the direction of her finger, seeing only a row of parked cars at first, until finally spotting a very tall woman with long chestnut hair standing leaning against a rather beastly motorbike, two helmets hanging from one hand and a smouldering cigarette resting between the fingers of her other hand.

"Shizuru thought we should all have breakfast and talk about what we're going to do to fix Kuwabara," Keiko explained.

Hiei gave Keiko a brief, scrutinising look, and, as though sensing what he had been thinking in that moment, Keiko spoke again.

"I've been through a lot of bad things in my life in the last few years," she said. "It's nice to have something positive to work towards. It's distracting me from my bigger problems and it feels good to be doing something altruistic."

Hiei nodded, though he did not understand her. She was not being a bossy, stroppy bitch like she had been before in the norm reality, and in that moment, with a small smile on her face and a slightly dreamy look in her eye, she looked and sounded a lot more like the Keiko of the paradise reality – before Hiei had created problems for her there – and seeing someone acting more like they were meant to be made Hiei feel a little better himself.

"We'll go on the bike," Keiko said, stopping by Kuwabara's sister and taking a helmet from her. "You can keep up with us, right?"

"Hn, of course," Hiei scoffed.

"Good," Kuwabara's sister said, dropping her cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out beneath one foot. "Then meet us at Yukimura Restaurant."

Hiei nodded his understanding and took off ahead of them, quickly navigating his way back to the restaurant and, predictably, arriving there ahead of them and being left waiting outside the still closed restaurant. After a minute or so they joined him at the door and Keiko unlocked it to let them in.

"You remember Shizuru, right Hiei?" she said to Hiei. "She's Kuwabara's sister."

Hiei nodded at Shizuru, making a mental note to make the effort to remember her name, since she might yet prove useful to him. Once they were inside, Keiko locked them in and called through to her father to serve them breakfast then led Hiei and Shizuru to a table for four, where they all sat down, Hiei at one side and the girls at the other.

"Okay Hiei, what can we do to help you out?" Shizuru asked.

Hiei paused, still feeling a little confused by the concept of anyone wanting to help him with anything, least of all two humans from his own reality that he had barely spoken to before that day.

"I can't access Kuwabara's mind," Hiei confessed. "He's a very powerful psychic, and the biggest problem is that his own natural defences are too great for me to overcome, and I need to overcome them to get access to his mind and undo what has been done."

"And you can give him back all his memories, right?" Keiko asked.

Hiei opened his mouth to give an affirmative answer, but something suddenly tugged hard on the inside of his chest and he paused, waiting for the discomfort to pass before continuing.

"Honestly, I don't know," he said, surprising even himself with his choice of words. "I can't see what has been done to know how or even if I can fix it. And you should also know that I'm not doing this for Kuwabara's sake like you both are. I'm doing this for Yukina. She's back in the ice village and she's miserable there, and I have to get her out. I'm only helping Kuwabara because if I can give him his memories back, he'll remember how to break the Kakai Barrier and let me back into demon world, and he'll remember Yukina and take care of her when I take her back here."

"I always wondered what had become of poor Yukina," Keiko said sadly. "And I want to help her too! It's so wonderful that you want to help her. You hardly even know her! Wait – are you in love with her? Because you do know that Kuwabara is sort of–"

"It's fine," Hiei cut her off.

"I'm still game too," Shizuru agreed. "I understand what it's like to see a sibling suffering and to feel helpless to stop it. Maybe that's why I want to help you now."

She smiled at Hiei, though it was a mirthless gesture. Keiko looked confused, and their differing expressions only confirmed what Hiei had always suspected to be true: Shizuru knew that he was Yukina's brother but Keiko (like Kuwabara) did not.

"Yukina is my sister," he said to her.

She gasped and even Shizuru looked a little taken aback.

"You already knew," Hiei reminded her.

"But I thought you didn't talk about it to anyone," Shizuru replied.

"How did you know and I didn't?" Keiko asked Shizuru.

Shizuru turned to her and looked at her for a few seconds before shaking her head.

"It's a long story, kid," she said. "Let's just focus on the matter at hand, yeah?"

Keiko looked less than convinced, but Shizuru ignored her questioning glare and turned back to Hiei.

"I'm a strong psychic too, it runs in the Kuwabara family," she told him. "Maybe I can help. You could experiment with my brain."

"It's not that simple," Hiei answered. "I need a method to break down the natural barriers around Kuwabara's mind. Giving me another powerful psyche to try to crack isn't going to make any difference."

"What about drugs?" Keiko asked.

"Drugs?" Hiei echoed.

"Yeah, drugs," Keiko said. "They make people lose control of themselves, maybe you could drug him."

"I could get you some pot, but nothing else," Shizuru added. "Though honestly, we'd have a hard job convincing Kazuma to take it, since it goes against his morals. We'd have to liquidise it and pour it over his food."

"What if it doesn't work?" Keiko asked.

"We could try it on me first," Shizuru offered. "I don't really want to give my brother drugs unless we know they're gonna make a difference."

"There are plants in demon world that can do this," Hiei said. "But with the Kakai Barrier up, I can't get to them. And besides, I don't really know which plants are best."

"If only Kurama were here!" Keiko said with a sigh. "He'd have just the right thing for this!"

Hiei was struck by an epiphany, but almost as quickly as it occurred to him he realised how ridiculous it was.

"There must be something in this world that's an equivalent to those plants in demon world that you're talking about, right?" Shizuru asked Hiei.

Hiei felt that horrible sinking feeling inside of him again.

"I have an idea," he said flatly.

"Well great!" Keiko said brightly. "What is it?"

"It's terrible," Hiei replied dully. "And desperate. But also possibly our only hope."

Hiei slowly pushed back his chair, scarcely able to believe that he was even considering doing what he was about to do.

"I'll meet you back here in an hour," he said.

"Where are you going?" Keiko asked, hurrying over to unlock the front door for him.

He paused on the street outside, looking at her for a long time before giving the only answer that he could.

"You don't want to know."

* * *

Hiei hopped down the branches of the large sakura tree by the perimeter of the gardens at the back of the hospital, only mildly surprised to see Shuichi crossing the lawn towards him as he landed on the ground. He waited for Shuichi to join him before nodding a greeting, trying to overlook the slightly smug smile on his face.

"You should keep this," he said, holding out a piece of paper towards Hiei.

Hiei took it and stuffed it into his pocket, already knowing that it was the reality chart he had left there the day before.

"I need your advice on something," he began.

"Would you like to sit down?" Shuichi offered, holding a hand out towards the chairs on the nearby patio.

"No," Hiei replied. "This isn't a social call. I need to find a certain type of plant, and you're the closest thing to a plant expert I know in this world."

"Well I did graduate with a degree in botanical sciences," Shuichi replied.

"…Right… I need something that can let me get inside Kuwabara's mind. He's a strong psychic, and I need something that can weaken that aspect of his brain."

"Then I'm not entirely sure why you have come to see me."

"Because you used to be Kurama, and Kurama would have known what to do!"

"I'm no expert on drugs, Hiei."

"I need to find an equivalent in the living world of the demon plants that can affect the mind in demon world."

"I can't help you."

Hiei growled angrily.

"Can't or won't?" he snapped irritably.

"Can't," Shuichi replied. "As I already told you, I am no expert on drugs."

He produced a small book from his hair – making Hiei balk at the sheer ridiculousness of his action.

"Trees were my area of expertise," he said, indicating the title of the book.

Hiei recognised the book as being the same one he had seen Shuichi reading from before, and for a brief moment he wondered if the contents of that book and some slight remnants of Kurama's memories were the limit of Shuichi's knowledge.

"My advice to you would be to find an expert on psychotropic plants," Shuichi continued. "Someone like that would be able to tell you what the most potent plant in this world is and how to use it effectively for your desired results. And as for where you could find such a person, I would suggest that you try the universities or botanical gardens in the major cities around–"

"You're useless, you know that?" Hiei cut him off. "This was the one time you could have actually been useful to me, and you're no help whatsoever. I don't even know why I bothered coming here again, because all you've done is waste my time!"

"I do apologise, Hiei," Shuichi said solemnly. "I would dearly love to be of assistance to you, but unless your dilemma involves trees, there's nothing really that I can do for you. I am sorry."

"So am I!" Hiei roared.

He whipped around and leapt back up the tree and over the wall beyond, hitting the ground running and taking himself back into the city. It was a relief to be able to move about freely without worrying about the Special Defence Force catching him, but Hiei was starting to think that, even with them out of the equation and Keiko and Shizuru trying to help, the situation was hopeless. If this really was the dystopia of his existence, then surely that meant that nothing he could possibly do could make it any better: so then why even bother?

In that frame of mind, Hiei was readying himself to give up. He was considering destroying something to get spirit world's attention and get himself sent back to demon world, where he could try – on his own – to help Yukina before enacting Mukuro's plan.

But then he saw something that made him stop running, stop breathing and stop thinking for several seconds.

Once he had recovered from his initial shock, Hiei slowly crossed the street towards the shop on the corner. It was the same shop he had trashed the first time he had returned from paradise in a fit of rage, and apparently, during his latest sojourn in the paradise reality, it had been rebuilt as something else. He stopped as he reached the front of the shop, altering between looking over the shop itself and checking his reflection in the window to confirm that he was present and what he was seeing was real.

Any doubt Hiei had about the validity of the green, green plant shop in front of him vanished when Maya walked past him carrying a large box.

"Maya!" he barked, causing her to yelp and spin around on the spot, almost dropping her load in the process.

"Oh, you startled me!" she said, smiling awkwardly. "The shop isn't open yet, not until tomorrow. But please come back again then."

Hiei slowly approached her, ignoring her words and even her face, his entire attention focused on the open box in her arms. He stopped in front of it and peered inside, unable to stop himself from reaching in and lifting out the one item that had caught his attention: a leafy flowering plant in a pot covered with a glass jar.

"Oh, be careful with that!" she said to him. "That's my black velvet nox orchid! The pollen of those flowers is a very powerful psychotropic drug with hypnotic effects! Misuse could leave you unconscious for days!"

Hiei grinned. It was not a happy a grin, though he did feel happy. It was a scheming, cocky grin that was delighting in the fact that he had found a loophole in the norm reality – he had done what Shuichi had suggested – he had found a common denominator between this reality and the paradise reality, and one which could not fail him, because it was not from his own life or his own creation. This, he thought to himself, his grin widening, was exactly what he needed to fix Kuwabara and save Yukina.

"Tell me how to make this work!" he demanded as he pushed the jar from the pot.

Maya yelped in shock and leapt back a step as the jar shattered on the ground at her feet.

"Tell me what I have to do with these to make them work, woman!" he insisted, grabbing two of the flowers and ripping them from the plant.

He waved them in her face and ordered her to help him again, a small, barely visible grey cloud obscuring her face slightly before her eyes rolled back in her head and she dropped to the ground in an ungracious heap.

"Fuck!" Hiei cursed.

He made to throw down the plant but as he looked at the broken glass jar and the fallen woman before him he realised that it would be a bad idea to break the plant pot and kill the plant too. Instead he crouched down and gently placed the pot on the ground before pushing the cardboard box and its scattered contents aside and carefully gathering Maya up into his arms. He looked about as he considered his options, eventually squatting down and picking the plant up again, resting it on Maya's stomach and rising to his feet again. He then pointed himself in the direction of Yukimura Restaurant and ran on.

* * *

Keiko opened the front door of Yukimura Restaurant, her eyes the size of saucers and fixed on the limp body in Hiei's arms as he stepped past her into the restaurant.

"Picking up girls again, Hiei?" Shizuru greeted him.

"This is the answer we need," he answered her. "Is there a bed somewhere I can lie her on until she wakes up?"

"No!" Keiko said, a little too urgently.

"Just set her down on a chair here," Shizuru suggested, pulling out a chair from a nearby table.

"What's going on out there?" Keiko's father called out to them from behind the counter. "Is that girl alright? Take her upstairs if she needs to lie down."

Hiei started towards the back of the restaurant but Keiko leapt into his path with surprising agility, her face slightly panicked.

"That's really not necessary," she said, sweating slightly.

"Don't be silly, Keiko!" her father said to her. "Get the girl to a bed! Take her to the spare bedroom on the top floor!"

Hiei gave Keiko a flat look.

"You have an entire spare room in this house?" he asked darkly. "And I had to sleep in the same room as Kuwabara and his cat last night?"

"Are you looking to rent a room, son?" Keiko's father called over to him. "We've got a spare room here for rent."

"No we don't, dad!" Keiko snapped at him.

"Yes we do, the room on the top floor–"

"Isn't free!"

Keiko glared at her father until he backed off again before turning back to Hiei.

"You don't want me here because you don't trust me," he said.

"No it's not that," she said, looking both embarrassed and genuinely sorry. "It's really complicated, I just… You're fine where you are, right?"

Hiei sighed.

"This girl won't wake up for some time, she was stunned by the pollen on this plant," he explained.

Keiko and Shizuru both took a big step back from Hiei as he nodded at the potted plant resting on Maya's stomach.

"I need to put her somewhere she can rest in peace," he continued. "When she wakes up, she'll be able to tell us how to use the plant on Kuwabara. If this plant doesn't work, nothing in this world will."

"Wow!" Keiko said. "How did you know where to find someone so knowledgeable about psychotropic plants so quickly?"

"I didn't," Hiei replied. "It was just a stroke of luck."

Hiei frowned slightly, barely believing that he had just said what he had, and even more amazed that it was actually the truth of the matter.

"I'll take her," Shizuru offered.

Hiei gave Keiko one last glare, but she merely blushed and turned away from him. She was probably worried that her parents would disapprove of his presence there: he supposed that he could use his jagan eye to check exactly why she was stopping him from entering the house above the restaurant, but he did not really care what her reasons were, so he handed Maya to Shizuru and carefully lifted the plant from her. He quickly took the plant to the other end of the room to ensure he did not accidentally do to anyone else what he had already done to Maya, and Keiko moved to help Shizuru carry Maya through to the back of the restaurant.

As the doors banged shut behind them the displaced air from the corridor beyond was blasted into the restaurant: and Hiei found himself sniffing at it as it smelt pleasantly familiar.

It smelt like that flowery stuff Botan used in the bath.

* * *

Hiei had been staring at the reality chart for some time – he could only guess at how long it had been – but he was still amazed at Shuichi's arrogance. The interfering, arrogant human had written on the chart without either asking Hiei if he could do so or bothering to tell him that he had. And not only had he written on it, but he had written something quite brazen and absurd.

"You could fix the things underlined in red quite easily, and if you get me out of here, I'll help you fix the rest."

It was bribery. A pitiful, formerly possessed human in a hospital for the mentally impaired was trying to bribe Hiei, an S class jaganshi, master of the darkness flame and controller of the dragon of the darkness flame.

It was either the clearest sign that Shuichi was riddled with madness or a sign that he was blindly confident because he knew he was capable of what he had claimed to be able to do: and it was quite difficult to decide which was the case. The only thing Hiei was sure of was that it was either a bluff or a promise, and only being offered because Shuichi wanted his freedom from the asylum. Setting him free was taking a big gamble, and although Hiei was quite a reckless soul, he did not want to ruin the progress he had made so far by releasing a crazy human from captivity to crap all over his good work.

The funny thing was, he had underlined a curious selection of things on the list of paradise reality facts: he had underlined "Yukina knows I am her brother", "Yukina is Kuwabara's lover" and "I am married to Botan". Hiei could perhaps understand the first two – after all, only Hiei could tell Yukina that he was her brother, and only after doing so would Yukina become Kuwbara's lover – but the third item there was no excuse for. Botan would not even want to go near him as a ferry girl, far less give up her ferry girl life to become his wife all of a sudden.

Shuichi was delusional. Amongst "the rest" he was proposing that he could help Hiei fix were things such as "Kurama is still living in the body of Shuichi and owns a plant shop with Maya" and "Yusuke is still living in his human form and works in Yukimura Restaurant as a chef": and any idiot could see that those things were impossible now. Perhaps they were mere wishful thinking on Shuichi's part, Hiei mused. He had made no secret about the fact that he missed sharing his body with Kurama's soul, and the poor fool probably thought that it was possible to go back to that way of life.

And also amongst "the rest" was the most impossible task of all: "demon world is at peace".

Hiei was glad when he heard a voice calling his name and he welcomed the distraction, folding up the chart and stuffing it back into his pocket before climbing down from the roof and meeting Keiko at the door of Yukimura Restaurant. The restaurant was open, and had been for some time – Kuwabara had already been to collect his lunch order as usual – but it was still devoid of customers. Hiei now understood why that was though: the food served there was average at best, and downright foul when compared to the dishes Yusuke had prepared there in the paradise reality. Obviously the business had struggled since Yusuke's departure, and it was little wonder that Keiko had been forced to work there to try to keep it afloat.

"She's awake," Keiko said as they walked into the restaurant together.

Hiei resisted the urge to sarcastically thank her for stating the obvious, instead approaching the table Maya was sitting at with Shizuru, who was still holding onto Maya's shoulders, apparently keeping her upright as she still looked a bit drowsy.

"Oh, there you are!" she said as her eyes found Hiei. "I tried to warn you to be careful with those orchids… What happened? I was unloading boxes from my car, I left the door to the shop and my car open!"

"Don't worry about that right now," Shizuru assured her.

"I'll go and check everything's okay," Keiko offered.

"Aren't you needed here?" Hiei asked.

Keiko quirked an eyebrow at him and he nodded.

"Good idea," he muttered. "Do you know where it is?"

Keiko nodded and hurried off again. Hiei sat down at the table across from Shizuru and Maya, who was by then staring at him curiously.

"You seem familiar…" she said slowly.

"It's called "déjà vu"," he replied.

"Have we met before?" she asked. "Oh, sometimes I get moments like this, and it's so frustrating! It's like I think I can remember something, but it's not quite there!"

"Sounds familiar…" Shizuru muttered.

"That's why I developed those orchids," Maya continued. "I always felt like I was repressing a memory, and I wanted to unlock it."

"And those flowers didn't work?" Shizuru asked, looking at Hiei even though she was directing the question to Maya.

"No, they just knock me out cold," Maya replied.

Shizuru arched her eyebrows at Hiei and he rolled his eyes impatiently.

"The flowers themselves don't bring back lost memories," he explained. "They just unlock the mind so that I can get in there and fix it!"

"Are you a hypnotherapist?" Maya asked him.

"…Yes," he carefully replied, not really wishing to have to explain himself to her.

"Would you help me?" she asked.

He screwed up his face at her in disgust but a kick to the shin and a harsh glare from Shizuru made him soften slightly.

"I need to understand how to use those flowers," he said.

"Well that depends," she replied. "They can be used for any purpose from sedation to comatose-inducing effects. If I tell you the doses and their effects, will you help me? I think I have a repressed memory from when I was about fourteen or so, can you help me remember it?"

"If you can fix her, maybe you can use the same method to fix my brother," Shizuru whispered to Hiei.

"What?" Maya asked, glancing back and forth between them both.

"I don't need to use the flowers to fix her," Hiei answered Shizuru. "She's not a powerful psychic. She seems to possess above average psychic strength for a human, but it's a pitiful amount of power when compared to what your brother can do."

"So fix her already," Shizuru whispered. "It's the least you could do for knocking her out with her own flowers and probably getting her car and shop robbed and for the help her flowers are going to give us."

"Fine!"

Hiei pulled off his bandana, quietly muttering complaints about being used as a tool for other people's petty problems again. Maya started to yelp out words of panic as she saw Hiei's third eye, but she quickly succumbed to the effects of looking into it, her mouth drooping and her pupils dilating. Her memories had been taken from her by Kurama, using the Pollen of Forgetfulness from demon world, and so undoing the damage to her was far easier than attempting to locate and deconstruct the almost literal walls that had been built in Kuwabara's mind to close off his memories from his consciousness. He quickly worked to undo what had been done, uncovering little more than a vague memory Maya had of being caught by a demon, her seeing Kurama fighting Hiei to save her from him and a sickeningly girly crush she had on Kurama.

Once he was finished Hiei replaced his bandana and arched his eyebrows in a sarcastic gesture at Shizuru, who gave him a slightly admonishing glare – the type Mukuro usually gave him when she thought he was acting especially childish – before turning towards Maya.

"How do you feel?" she asked her.

Maya slowly shook her head, her eyes looking about herself before landing on Hiei.

"You're a ghostie!" she said.

Shizuru snorted in amusement and Hiei sighed.

"I-I don't believe this!" Maya said, her face slowly draining of colour. "I remember now… That boy, Shuichi Minamino… He could… He had special powers!"

"Yes, now tell us how to use those flowers," Hiei said, his patience wearing ever thinner.

"He was fast, and he could sense things and he was strong…" Maya said, her eyes losing focus slightly.

"Don't you dare faint, woman!" Hiei warned her.

"He made a sword out of a blade of grass!" she said, turning to Shizuru.

"Yeah, that sounds like him alright," Shizuru said. "Shuichi wasn't an ordinary guy, Maya. He was possessed by a demon called Kurama."

"Possessed by a demon?" Maya wailed.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," Shizuru assured her. "He was one of the good guys."

"…I always knew there was something special about him… I can sometimes sense spooky things…"

Shizuru visibly suppressed a snigger as Hiei's face dropped at Maya's use of the word "spooky".

"I went to school with him…" Maya continued. "I used to… I really liked him. He won a scholarship to a better school and after that I never saw him again, but… I wonder what happened to him?"

"He's gone," Hiei told her flatly.

"Oh no!" she gasped. "He died?"

"Sort of," Hiei said with a shrug.

Shizuru kicked his shin under the table again and glared at him threateningly. Hiei wondered if he needed to remind her how easily he could kill her.

"Kurama went back to demon world," Shizuru told Maya.

"Oh…" Maya said.

"He's a full demon again," Hiei added. "And Shuichi is insane without him."

Maya and Shizuru both turned to Hiei, fixing him with the sort of look that told him he had just said something he ought not to have said.

"What do you mean, "Shuichi is insane without him"?" Shizuru asked.

"I mean he's in a hospital for the insane," Hiei replied. "And that's where he has been ever since Kurama left him. And it's the best place for him, because he actually is insane."

"Shui…Shuichi is still in this world?" Shizuru asked faintly.

"Shuichi is in an insane asylum?" Maya asked.

"He's crazy," Hiei reminded them.

"I thought he went back to demon world?" Shizuru asked.

"Kurama did," Hiei replied. "He left Shuichi's body behind and came back to demon world to live as a full demon again. Shuichi still thinks he is Kurama, so his mother had him put somewhere that he can be controlled and monitored."

"That's terrible!" Maya cried.

"I didn't know!" Shizuru said.

"Well, now you do," Hiei said. "So let's get those flowers and start fixing Kuwabara."

"But what about Shuichi?" Maya asked.

Hiei paused, halfway out of his chair. He glanced back and forth between the two girls, the vague idea that he was about to be used as a tool again creeping up on him.

"We can't leave him where he is!" Shizuru added. "We have to get him out! He's not insane, after all."

Hiei shook his head.

"He was always such a wonderful, intelligent, polite and sensitive boy!" Maya said.

"That was Kurama," Hiei pointed out.

"You have to get him out of there," Shizuru said.

"Me?" Hiei echoed, his anger starting to flare. "Why me?"

"Because you know why he's there, and you can use your jagan eye to convince the doctors that there's nothing wrong with him!" Shizuru argued.

"And why would I do that?" Hiei asked sarcastically. "There is something seriously wrong with him: he's completely out of his mind!"

"But it's so cruel!" Maya said.

"Yeah, Hiei!" Shizuru agreed. "If you can do something to get him out of there then you should do it! He's not Kurama, but he did share his body with Kurama for a long, long time, and the Kurama we knew was partly Shuichi, so you owe it to Kurama to do this!"

"Are you listening to yourself?" Hiei roared. "You sound even more illogical and insensible than Shuichi!"

"You have to do this, Hiei!" she insisted.

"I don't have to do anything!"

"Yes you do!" Maya cried. "If you don't help him, I won't help you!"

Hiei took a moment to push down the rising urge to tear Maya's head from her shoulders, only daring to speak again once he was sure that he had it under control.

"We had an agreement," he said as calmly as he possibly could. "You said that you would show me how to use those flowers if I gave you your lost memories back. I upheld my end of that agreement, now it's your turn."

"Hiei, just go and get Shuichi back," Shizuru said, standing up from the table. "Come on Maya, I'll take you back to your shop so that you can sort everything out there. Keiko should be there by now anyway and I can give her a ride back."

Maya nodded, rising to her feet.

"We'll come and see you once we've got Shuichi back," Shizuru added.

"What?" Hiei yelled.

Shizuru put her hands on Maya's shoulders and gently but firmly steered her towards the door.

"Meet me and Keiko back here," she told Hiei. "And obviously bring Shuichi with you. He might be able to help us."

"I'm not…" Hiei began, watching Shizuru guide Maya out of the restaurant. "You can't make me… I don't take orders from… He's insane, and he's an idiot, and… Fuck!"

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei frees Shuichi, but shortly questions his decision to do so when he starts to act like someone who belongs in an insane asylum. Together, Hiei, Shuichi, Keiko, Shizuru and Maya try one last time to open Kuwabara's mind with the pollen of the orchids; and when Kuwabara eventually reawakens, the results leave Hiei panicking. **Chapter 37: Anything She Does**


	37. Anything She Does

**Recap:** Hiei moved in with Kuwabara (oh noes), he asked Shuichi for help but got nowhere, he recruited Maya into helping him and he returned her lost memories to her, at which point she demanded he free Shuichi from the hospital which he did not want to do, but realised he would have to

* * *

 **Chapter 37: Anything She Does**

"Don't you dare make me regret this. And stop smiling like that. And don't bother thinking that this means anything, because it doesn't. It means absolutely nothing. And it doesn't change anything either. I still think that you're a smug, self-serving, arrogant prick. And you're useless… Stop fucking smiling like that! Why do you always smile when I insult you? It's infuriating!"

Hiei breathed heavily and noisily, ignoring the passers-by staring at him fearfully. Shuichi was still smiling far too smugly in front of him, his eyes closed and his eyebrows raised at an almost comical angle. They were waiting by the front entrance to the hospital for Shuichi's mother, who a doctor had called after confirming that Shuichi was cured and ready to go home. Convincing the staff had been ridiculously easy work for Hiei, but he had hated every minute of it, especially when he had seen the smug look it gave Shuichi: the look he was still wearing now.

"I didn't do this because I like you or even because I wanted to," he said. "I was made to do it."

"I've never known anyone force you to do anything, Hiei," Shuichi said, his smile going a little crooked as it became one of amusement.

"You've never known me, you idiot!" Hiei snapped. "You're not Kurama!"

"I never said that I was, my good friend," Shuichi replied, his smile straightening slightly and his eyes suddenly opening out wide.

"And I'm not your good friend!"

"But even though I am not Kurama, I am still confident that I can be of assistance to you in your quest."

"My… My what?"

"I can help you fix this. I've been giving a lot of consideration to everything you've told me about the reality you named "paradise" – I was often bored in that hospital, it was something of a relief to contemplate such a complex conundrum – and I do believe that you can make this reality a paradise too."

"…What?"

"It's closer than you think, Hiei. And I was very intrigued when you told me that you had managed to return there: by now you must know even more about the secrets of that reality's success, and, if you are willing to share them with me, I will help you make them happen here."

Hiei's left eye twitched painfully and he turned his back on Shuichi, feeling almost relieved when a taxi arrived and Shiori Minamino got out of it and started sobbing over the red-haired idiot. He knew he was going to regret freeing Shuichi. He had known, before he had even left Yukimura Restaurant, that he would regret it, but now there was no margin for doubt. As Shiori showered her son with kisses, Hiei considered the irony that, in just over two days, he had gone from lying in bed in a peaceful house as his son went out and his wife returned to pleasure him in the most exquisite way, to living with a brainwashed Kuwabara (who inexplicably thought he was a juvenile delinquent) and his irksome feline companion, dealing with Keiko and Shizuru bossing him around like they had the right to, running errands for Maya – who he barely knew and he still felt looked too much like Shiori – and now babysitting Shuichi, who was a snide snot-rag of a human. And he was basically hiding from spirit world and delaying his inevitable return to demon world, both of which, he knew, would eventually catch up to him and be quite disastrous when they did.

"Oh Hiei, isn't this wonderful?"

"What?"

Hiei started to turn around towards Shiori to find out what she was talking about and promptly found his face being squashed into her chest as she grabbed him into a hug and started sobbing into his hair. He went stiff, mostly out of sheer horror that a middle-aged human woman of no consequence to him suddenly thought that she had the right to put her hands on him and also slightly because he felt too guilty to push her off of him.

And the guilt he felt was really only slight and barely worth acknowledging: a small part of him was still replaying the moment paradise Kurama has asked after her and he had been forced to admit that, in the norm reality, Shiori had been dumped by her husband and was miserable because her previously perfectly lucid and intelligent son was so mentally unstable, she had been forced to check him into a hospital to keep him under control.

But it was only a small thing to Hiei.

"Oh my boy!" she said, abruptly releasing Hiei again, much to his relief. "My beautiful, beautiful boy!"

She grabbed onto Shuichi again and he gladly put his arms around her, smiling over her shoulder at Hiei. Hiei gave him a dark look as his smile turned into that infuriating smug one again, and again he was reminded that helping free Shuichi was going to become something he would regret. It was a bad decision, Hiei thought. How ironic!

"I've made dinner," Shiori said. "You'll join us, won't you Hiei?"

She put a hand on Hiei's shoulder and smiled at him through teary eyes; and behind her Shuichi was still smiling far too smugly.

"Do I have a choice?" Hiei asked sarcastically.

"My mother has made white fish in a cream sauce," Shuichi said, putting a hand on Hiei's other shoulder. "That's your favourite."

Hiei opened his mouth to tell Shuichi that he could shove his white fish and his pretensions of friendship somewhere infinitely unpleasant, but before he could form his rebuttal into words a worrying thought occurred to him: white fish in a cream sauce actually was his favourite living world meal.

"I hate you," he said instead.

And he was less than surprised to see that his remark made Shuichi smile smugly again.

* * *

After dinner, Hiei spent far longer than he felt was necessary walking back to Yukimura Restaurant with Shuichi. It was not that Shuichi walked slowly, more that he insisted on making three prolonged stops en route. The first was at Maya's shop – which was closed and Maya herself was not there. He spent a long time looking in the window and smiling to himself before eventually agreeing to move on, and then only managing two streets more before stopping again and going into a strange shop to buy something he said he would need to help Hiei with his "quest". Hiei ignored Shuichi's reference to him being on any sort of "quest" again and waited outside of the shop as patiently as he could until he emerged, ignoring the bag he was carrying – because frankly, he did not want to know what it contained – and they continued on until they reached the building Kuwabara worked in, at which point Shuichi stopped again.

"I remember when Kuwabara started working here," he said. "It was before the war in demon world, a time when Kurama was still a part of me and your sister Yukina was still here in the living world."

"He's not there right now," Hiei said, pointing up at the window Kuwabara was usually sat at, which was, strangely, in darkness.

"Well it is past eight in the evening," Shuichi reminded him. "Most people in office jobs don't work this late."

"Hn, that idiot does," Hiei snorted. "I've seen him here much later than this before."

"Perhaps he was just working over-time that day," Shuichi suggested. "I doubt it would be a regular thing."

"But he…"

Hiei frowned, suddenly interested in what Shuichi was saying. In his past experience, Kuwabara always worked late, and yet since his return from his second visit to paradise, Kuwabara seemed to be finishing work much earlier and he seemed more rested and mildly happier. Something must have changed in his absence, though he could only guess at what it might have been.

"Did he work here in the paradise reality?" Shuichi asked.

"No," Hiei replied. "He was famous in the paradise reality."

Shuichi turned to Hiei, his eyes wide and his eyebrows twisted at alternate angles in disbelief, the extreme expression making it easier for Hiei to remember that he was not looking at Kurama.

"Surely not for his singing?" he asked.

"No, idiot!" Hiei replied. "He built the wooden house."

Shuichi tilted his head slightly and Hiei sighed in exasperation, entering the building and again ignoring the security guard at the reception desk who began demanding to know who he was. He tore down the poster from the wall and took it back outside with him, passing it to Shuichi.

"This person," he said, poking a finger at the strange-looking man pictured on the poster. "He owns the wooden house on legs. It's a hideous structure in this reality, but in the paradise reality, it looks different because Kuwabara made it. This person is very wealthy and he paid Kuwabara a lot of money to build the wooden house because he saw the tree-house Kuwabara built for me and he liked it a lot."

"And now the person who built the wooden house in this reality has passed away, and this man is looking for someone to build another house for him in America," Shuichi said, pointing at the text at the bottom of the poster. "Though, according to this, the closing date for initial proposals has passed already. It was Friday last week. That's a pity."

"Who cares?" Hiei asked, rolling his eyes.

"I do," Shuichi replied. "And you should do too, Hiei. Don't you see the opportunity that this represented for Kuwabara?"

"It's just a… What?"

"You said that Kuwabara built a house for this man in the paradise reality, yes?"

"…Yes, but I don't see why that's relevant."

"It's relevant because that man is now looking for someone to build him a house in this reality. Kuwabara has a chance to become what he was in the paradise reality with this. Or rather, he did have a chance. The closing date for the competition has passed, unfortunately. If you had spotted this sooner, you could have fixed this."

"…Why would I even want to fix that? I hate Kuwabara. I don't care if he becomes famous or not."

"…But aren't you currently devoting all of your time and energy to helping him recover his memories and powers?"

"Yes, but only because I need him to help me rescue Yukina!"

"You intend to rescue Yukina?"

Hiei snarled out a curse that echoed off the high buildings around them.

"How?" Shuichi asked, seemingly unaffected by Hiei's outburst.

"What do you mean "how"?" Hiei snapped. "I'm going to make Kuwabara cut open the Kakai Barrier so that I can get into demon world, and from there I'll go to the ice village, get Yukina, and take her back here!"

"…That's your plan?"

"Yes!"

"…That's not much of a plan, Hiei."

"Who the hell are you to question my plans?"

"Well I may not be Kurama–"

"Damn right you're not!"

"–but even I can see that you haven't put any thought into this at all."

Shuichi calmly rolled up the poster Hiei had handed to him and slid it into the bag he was carrying. Hiei glared at him until me made eye contact again, and when Hiei saw the almost haughty look he gave him, he gave up trying to be tactful.

"And how would you do this, Shuichi?" he sneered sarcastically. "Tell me your fantastic plan that's so much better than mine!"

"I don't have a plan," Shuichi replied. "I never said that I did. I was merely pointing out that you have not given your plan the due consideration that it requires for effective execution."

Hiei screwed up his face at Shuichi and again the redhead smiled at him in that insolent manner.

"Take heart, my good friend, for you are not alone," he said. "I'm sure that, if we all put our heads together, we can brainstorm a better plan for–"

"Stop," Hiei cut him off. "The plan is this: I give you to Maya, she uses her plant to weaken Kuwabara, I restore Kuwabara's memories, he cuts open the Kakai Barrier, I go the demon world, I get Yukina, I take her back here, Kuwabara hides her from the SDF, and I go back to Mukuro and end the war. Simple. Stop complicating it with fancy words and unnecessary bullshit."

Shuichi's smile vanished and, for the first time in a long time, he took on a serious expression that did actually make him look more like he was still Kurama.

"What do you mean about ending the war?" he asked.

"Mukuro has a plan to end the war," Hiei replied. "She needs me to make it happen."

"Is it a drastic and quite terrible plan, or is it a sensible and quite strategic one?" Shuichi asked.

"That's not your concern, you're not a demon, you don't live in demon world, the war there has nothing to do with you."

"It has everything to do with me, Hiei. I am what I am now because of that war. If that war had not begun, I would be the same person you met in the "paradise" reality, but quite clearly I am not."

Hiei faltered slightly, the increasingly stern look on Shuichi's face making him almost indefinable from Kurama, and for a moment Hiei almost felt as though he was back in paradise enduring another "smarten up" lecture from Kurama himself.

"Hiei, surely by now you must see that your bad decisions damage more than just your own fate," Shuichi continued quietly. "And your good decisions improve more than just your own fate too. Don't damage things any further, Hiei. Start improving them."

"I am making an improvement," Hiei said defensively. "I'm rescuing Yukina and improving her life."

"And for that I commend you," Shuichi said. "Helping Yukina is a very noble thing to do. But I hope it won't be the only noble thing that you do now. All of our futures depend on you continuing your good work."

"I'm not responsible for the mess anyone else around here is in! I accept responsibility for Yukina, but nothing else."

"Not even Botan?"

"I've already done all I can for her."

"Really? What did you do?"

"I helped her see Koenma's true intentions and I apologised for what I did to her with the rock monster, and she accepted my apology."

"…And?"

"And that's it over now."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"You don't want to marry her? I thought that was the main reason you liked paradise so much: having Botan as your wife?"

"It's impossible in this reality. She hates me. She forgave me, but she still hates me. She doesn't want me anywhere near her, and there are so many things standing between us now, I can't ever be a part of anything she does anyway. And of course, she would never make the sacrifices in this reality that she had to in paradise to be with me. And I wouldn't expect her to."

"Really?"

"Yes, really!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, damn it!"

"You're absolutely sure that it's over?"

"Yes!"

"From your point of view as well as hers? You're happy to just let her go?"

"I never had her to begin with! It's over!"

"If it really is over, why are you crying?"

"I'm not fucking crying! What is it with you humans and your crying and your–"

Hiei suddenly found himself sitting on the ground in an awkward position with no memory of how or when his legs had failed him.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Shuichi asked him.

"I need coffee," Hiei muttered.

"I'm sure Keiko can help you with that," Shuichi said, holding out a hand towards him. "Though I had no idea that you liked coffee."

"I hate it," Hiei said, taking Shuichi's hand and letting him help him to his feet. "But I need it."

"Like Kuwabara?" Shuichi asked jokingly. "You hate him and yet need him too!"

"Inappropriate," Hiei grumbled.

Shuichi bowed his head apologetically before giving Hiei a scrutinising look.

"Shut-up," Hiei said, turning away from him. "It's just rainwater."

He walked on, and, after a few steps, he heard Shuichi hurrying after him, soon falling into pace with him and continuing on at his side. They walked all the way back to Yukimura Restaurant in silence, but Hiei barely noticed as his mind had suddenly become filled with something else entirely: he had left paradise with Botan hating him and unable to clearly remember when they had last kissed or made love, and certainly not knowing that it had been their last intimate moment when he had experienced it, and now that he was not immediately facing death in his own reality, he was going to have to endure an existence with no hope of Botan ever feeling the way she had about that other Hiei. After his first, exceptionally brief, visit to paradise the possibility of returning to paradise had given Hiei something to work towards – and he needed something to work towards to keep him alive – but now he had nothing.

Just freeing Yukina, he told himself. That was something to work towards, it was important and it was a noble cause. Unfortunately, the road to that goal was paved with idiots, but it was part of a road of atonement, that would begin with him rescuing his sister and taking her to a better place to allow her to have a happier future and would end with him fulfilling Mukuro's plan.

But, even knowing that, he still wished he could have even just one more hour in paradise, one last moment that he could clearly remember, before he started the difficult journey ahead of him.

* * *

Hiei paused, his eyes slowly lifting from the table as he felt something touching his foot under the table.

"Ew, is that your foot?" Kuwabara asked him.

Hiei grunted as Kuwabara roughly retracted his foot, stomping on Hiei's toes as he did so.

"Isn't this weird?" Keiko asked, looking around the table. "It's like a reunion, only without Yusuke!"

"D'you know what's really weird?" Kuwabara began, pulling something from his inside coat pocket. "Hiei took me to an old ruined temple yesterday and I found this photograph, and even though I don't remember it being taken, I'm in it! And so are you Keiko! And Hiei's here too, there's another guy there – I don't know who he is – there's Natsuko and the guy next to me looks just like him!"

Kuwabara pointed across the table and Shuichi who smiled politely back at him.

"May I see that?" he asked.

"Sure," Kuwabara said, passing him the picture.

Shuichi took it, his smile becoming a slightly saddened one as he studied the faces looking out from the photograph at him.

"I think I have an explanation for it though," Kuwabara said.

Keiko's head snapped up and she looked around the others optimistically, apparently fooled into thinking that seeing the photograph had been enough to return Kuwabara's memories to him – despite the fact that he had, again, called Botan Natsuko.

"Either that picture was taken at a very drunken student party," he said. "Because I did go to a few of those, I admit, or it's not actually me in that picture, it's just a guy who looks really like me."

"A guy who looks really like you?" Hiei repeated back at him. "Surely your god is not so cruel as to inflict two humans as ugly as you onto this world?"

"Maybe it's Hanamichi Sakuragi," Kuwabara said.

Hiei clenched his fists and swallowed down an insulting retort.

"I remember when this photo was taken," Keiko said, taking the photograph from Shuichi. "It seems like so long ago now – like a whole lifetime away from where we are now."

"I remember Yukina didn't want to be a part of it," Shuichi said. "She was afraid that the camera would capture her soul – I suppose that, growing up in the cloistered environment of the ice village, some of her beliefs were quite outdated."

"It's a pity she's not in this picture," Keiko said. "Because of her phobia, we never got any photos of her. I used to think that maybe if we had, we could have shown them to Kuwabara and maybe, y'know…"

"…What?" Kuwabara echoed.

"Oh, nothing," Keiko sighed.

Maya entered the restaurant from the back doors, smiling nervously as she approached the table the others were sat around. Hiei glared at her and she gave a small nod to confirm that she had done as he had asked: after much deliberation on the matter, he had managed to convince her to give Kuwabara the second strongest dose possible of the orchid pollen – the strongest dose possible induced a prolonged coma, which was too big a risk to take, and anything stronger was fatal.

"Cup of tea?" she asked.

"Um, no thanks," Kuwabara answered, frowning at her slightly as she placed a full, steaming cup of tea down in front of him.

"Drink it," Hiei insisted.

"I don't want it," Kuwabara replied.

"Shut-up and drink it!" Shizuru snapped at him. "It was made for you, don't be ungrateful."

"Gees, calm down sis!" he grumbled. "It's just some damn tea…"

He muttered a few more complaints under his breath, but lifted the cup and took a sip regardless.

"Are you sure about the um… Strength?" Keiko whispered to Hiei.

"It's the second strongest," Maya said, sitting down beside her.

"Did it need to be that severe?" Keiko asked Hiei.

"I factored in his powers of defence and his recovery abilities," Hiei replied, smirking slightly.

"Of course, yes," Keiko said, nodding her head. "It's lucky we have someone as knowledgeable about psychic matters as you here to keep us right."

"I thought you said you just wanted to make sure that he didn't wake up for a while?" Shuichi said. "Though you should really take more care with these things: all of your efforts will have been in vain if that tea poisons him to death."

Kuwabara spluttered and spat out a mouthful of tea, choking down the small amount he had not managed to rid himself of.

"Is that supposed to be a joke?" he asked Shuichi. "Because it's really not funny!"

"Of course it's a joke, you big idiot!" Shizuru said, patting him on the shoulder. "Now drink your tea."

Kuwabara slowly looked around the table.

"How come nobody else is drinking tea?" he asked. "Why did you only make tea for me?" he asked Maya.

"Oh, um," she floundered, her face reddening. "Well, I, uh–"

"Just drink the fucking tea!" Hiei yelled, jumping onto the table and pouncing at Kuwabara.

He grabbed up the cup of tea from the table, clutching it tightly as the chair rocked back and forth a few times before falling backwards. Hiei then quickly pinched Kuwabara's nostrils together to force his mouth open and poured the tea down his throat. Behind him the others were yelling out at him to stop but he ignored them all, pouring every last drop of the potent tea into Kuwabara's open mouth and ordering him to swallow it.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Kuwabara yelled at him once he had finished choking down the scalding hot liquid. "You're such a weird little… Ooh, pretty colours and ponies…"

Kuwabara's eyes lost focus, rolled back in his head and his eyelids fell shut, his body going limp.

"Finally," Hiei said, standing up and stepping off of him.

"That was a bit harsh!" Keiko complained.

"But effective," Shizuru said.

"Though definitely lacking in finesse," Shuichi added.

"You don't get to have an opinion any more!" Hiei snapped at him.

"Has it worked?" Keiko asked.

"Well, he will be out cold until at least tomorrow morning after that," Maya said.

"But has it worked?" Shizuru asked.

Hiei knelt down at Kuwabara's side, hesitating briefly as he considered that what he was about to might reveal more of Kuwabara's inner self and thought processes than he had ever wanted to know about and that was quite a daunting prospect. He then steeled himself to continue, removing his bandana once more and attempting to reach into Kuwabara's mind.

"Good luck," Shuichi called out to him.

Hiei paused long enough to mutter out where Shuichi could shove his luck and his badly timed interruptions before proceeding.

* * *

A group of humans standing on the other side of the street were staring. Hiei could understand why, and as they had not been the first to do so (and probably would not be the last, either), he did not bother giving then a death-glare or saying anything. Quite obviously what he was doing made for a ridiculous sight, and he so he devoted his energy to planning how he was going to make Keiko pay for it the next day.

As Maya had predicted, the pollen they had dosed Kuwabara with had left him out cold with no hope of revival any time soon. The concoction had been strong enough to allow Hiei access to his mind, where he had seen many, many things that still made him feel nauseous to recall, but mostly he had seen a very messy – but very complete – set of restrictions in place to stop Kuwabara from remembering or understanding various things. It had been quite difficult to define exactly what purpose each little block served, and so Hiei had simply tried to destroy them all. He could not confirm if what he had done had worked – partially or fully – until Kuwabara woke up again and could tell them as much, and since he was still unconscious, everyone had to wait until the next morning.

And that was where Hiei's anger at Keiko began.

After he had finished his task, he had suggested that, with Shuichi's help, he should take Kuwabara to a bed somewhere in the Yukimura family home above their restaurant to let him rest for the night. Keiko's father had again gladly offered them a room, but again Keiko had panicked at the idea of Hiei entering her home, and ultimately she had told him to take Kuwabara back to his own apartment. As Maya was the only one amongst them who actually owned a car, Hiei had hoped that she would take Kuwabara back for them: but for some stupid reason she did not have the car at the restaurant, and somehow Hiei and Shuichi, who had already picked Kuwabara up between them ready to carry him up to a room above the restaurant, now found themselves walking the journey back to Kuwabara's apartment, still carrying a very limp and unconscious man between them.

"Are you alright, Hiei?" Shuichi asked (for about the tenth time, Hiei noted angrily).

"Never better," Hiei sarcastically replied.

"I think you're carrying most of his weight," Shuichi pointed out. "If you want to stop and swap places, I don't mind."

"It's fine, let's just keep going," Hiei lied.

It was anything but fine. Kuwabara's weight was not the problem; the indignity of carrying Kuwabara was the problem. Also he was probably not holding him by the best of methods: Kuwabara's back was resting against his and he had hooked his arms through Kuwabara's, and behind him, Shuichi was holding up Kuwabara's ankles. The height difference was simply too great for Hiei to carry Kuwabara on his back, and Shuichi was not strong enough to carry a man the size of Kuwabara over such a distance unaided, and so Hiei was forced to continue on, trying to forget his own humiliation.

But with every step he took he hated Keiko more for making him do what he was now doing.

They soon reached their destination, and, after much cursing and complaining (solely on Hiei's part), they managed to manoeuvre him through the door and up the stairs to his apartment, where Hiei made Shuichi retrieve the keys from wherever they were stored about Kuwabara's person: carrying him had been quite humiliating enough, Hiei was not about to start fumbling around in the man's pockets.

Inside the apartment the cat was howling by an empty food bowl and the neighbours at one side and above them were banging on the wall and roof respectively and yelling for the cat to be silent. Hiei dropped Kuwabara onto the couch and stopped there, glaring up at the roof. Behind him, Shuichi diligently set about pouring out food for the cat, changing its water and then unfolding Kuwabara's bed from the wall: but Hiei stay where he was throughout Shuichi's activities, staring up at the roof.

"You're a pair of cheeky bastards!" he yelled suddenly, brandishing a fist at the roof despite the fact that the neighbours above him could not see the threat. "You were rutting and caterwauling like animals all night last night and I never said a damn word! You don't like the noise of that cat? I don't like the noise of your ass banging against my roof for seven hours straight! Fuck you!"

The apartment was silent then and Hiei nodded in satisfaction. The neighbour at the side had apparently also heard his rant and thought better of continuing to bang on the wall. He turned to Shuichi, who was in the process of fluffing a pillow.

"That was very–"

"Shut-up!"

Shuichi paused, giving him a slightly strange look.

"Just don't say it," Hiei warned him.

Shuichi slowly placed the pillow down.

"That was–"

"Stop it!"

"–very welcome."

"I thought I told you to – wait, what?"

Shuichi smiled gently and crossed the room to stand at Hiei's side.

"They were being quite inconsiderate and unreasonable," he said.

"Yes they were!" Hiei agreed angrily.

"Yes, they were," Shuichi said, nodding his head. "But hopefully no more."

Hiei was confused. He had been expecting Shuichi to subject him to a lecture on his distinct lack of diplomacy skills, and so to find that he was apparently agreeing him with came as something of a shock.

"Let's put Kuwabara in the bed," Shuichi suggested.

Hiei nodded and helped him carry Kuwabara over to the bed, only realising what a ridiculously sappy gesture it had been as he watched Shuichi pull the bed-sheets over him.

"Perhaps we should remove his clothes," he said, looking genuinely thoughtful.

"I'm leaving this apartment if you do that," Hiei warned him.

Shuichi looked like he intended to argue the point, but a stern glower from Hiei kept him silent. They stood for several minutes watching each other before Hiei finally grew impatient.

"Is there a reason that you're still here?" he asked.

"I thought I might stay here tonight," Shuichi replied, smiling amiably.

Hiei scowled.

"I don't think so," he said sternly. "I already have to deal with noisy human neighbours, that noisy, cumbersome animal and a cat. This apartment isn't big enough and I'm not lenient enough to accommodate you here too!"

"I thought we could talk," Shuichi replied, apparently unaffected by Hiei's threatening tone.

"Oh, I'll just put on the kettle then, shall I?" Hiei asked sarcastically.

"No, that's alright, this won't take long," Shuichi said, again missing Hiei's intended meaning. "And besides, I think you need to give up your caffeine addiction, it could become quite the disability for you."

"I'm not really addicted to it, I just need to have it sometimes."

"Yes, well, that would be the definition of an addiction… Anyway, I bought a little something on my way here that I thought you might like. During these last few years, since Kurama separated from me, I've been looking for ways to reach my inner Kurama."

"…Your what?"

"My inner Kurama. I've always believed that I can still access his thought processes, and I've found a method that almost allows me to do just that. I should warn you, however, that it's not perfect. After all, Kurama has actually left my body. This is just a sort of physical medium I can use to enhance my mind and help me think more like he did, which is something I am familiar with after sharing my mind with him for so long."

"…I hate it already."

Shuichi smiled and waved a hand at Hiei as though he thought he was joking. Hiei watched him open up the bag of whatever it was he had insisted on stopping to buy on their way to Yukimura Restaurant.

"I discovered this method during a party we had at the hospital once," he said.

Hiei wondered who's idea of joke it was when Shuichi produced a set of white, fuzzy, fake fox ears from the bag – the same set of white, fuzzy, fake fox ears that Monzan had worn to his "play" in the paradise reality – and proceeded to put them on his head and pull a ridiculous face, exactly as Kurama had done in the paradise reality.

"That's what it was?" Hiei muttered aloud.

"I find that acting like a fox demon helps me think like one," Shuichi replied, putting on a comically gruff voice that was probably meant to sound like Youko Kurama.

Hiei slowly ran his eyes over Shuichi, with his cartoonish fox ears and falsely vicious expression; he looked over at Kuwabara, lying flat on his back with his mouth hanging shamelessly open; he looked over at the rotund cat munching its way through a small mountain of cat food; and finally he looked up at the roof as the couple in the apartment above Kuwabara's started their night-time activities despite his warning to them only minutes earlier.

"The dystopia of my life continues," he concluded, before crawling onto the couch and pulling a cushion down over his face.

* * *

Hiei awoke to the sound of an alarm clock buzzing intrusively. Still barely awake, he stood up from the couch, stumbled a few steps towards the source of the sound, narrowly missed tripping over Shuichi, who had fallen asleep on the floor with the cat cuddled to his chest, and finally he reached the small nightstand at the side of Kuwabara's bed. He smacked the alarm clock a few times before picking it up and crushing it in his hand until it fell silent at last. He then breathed a sigh of relief and looked about himself, wondering why nobody else had woken up.

He started back towards the couch, deciding that he would just go back to sleep, only stopping when he heard Kuwabara muttering something and then sitting up behind him. He turned around to see Kuwabara looking as though he had been awoken after an insufficient amount of sleep. He felt for his alarm clock, his fingers drumming against the nightstand in various directions before he eventually noticed that the clock – or rather, the remains of the clock – were on the floor at his bedside.

"Whoa…" he mumbled, before swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.

He stood up, yawned and then began packing away his bed. Hiei watched him expectantly, but Kuwabara did not look his way once, instead carrying on with his usual morning routine. He packed up his bed and headed into the bathroom, and Hiei heard him brushing his teeth whilst urinating.

"Did it work?"

Hiei jerked around to see that Shuichi was also finally awake, his eyes fixed on the bathroom door.

"No idea," Hiei answered him. "He isn't acting any differently."

"Then we need to find another way to reach his lost memories," Shuichi said, untangling himself from the cat and carefully setting it down in its bed.

"There is no other way," Hiei reminded him. "If that plant potion wasn't enough, nothing ever will be. I got into his mind and I did all that I could. There's nothing else we can do now. If this has failed, there's truly no hope for Kuwabara."

"What about the SDF?" Shuichi asked, standing up at Hiei's side.

"They're a band of worthless bastards?" Hiei offered.

"No, I mean what about employing their assistance in this matter?"

Hiei slowly lifted his eyes, seeing that Shuichi was still wearing those stupid fox ears: why he had slept in them was a mystery Hiei never wanted to know the answer to.

"I think you should take those off," he suggested. "They don't help you think like Kurama, they simply lower your IQ and make you even more absurd – visually and verbally – than usual."

"Surely not every member of the SDF is so harsh as to agree that Kuwabara should continue to be denied access to his own past and powers," Shuichi said, ignoring Hiei's insult entirely.

"Obviously you know nothing of their ways," Hiei said.

"We need someone on the inside," Shuichi said. "We need an ally in spirit world, someone who could perhaps point us towards the most benevolent officer of the SDF, or else could help us convince one of the officers to help us in our plight, or even just to find out how the SDF were able to access Kuwabara's mind to cause the damage that they did in the first place."

"Gee, why didn't I think of that? I'm so glad that I set you free, you've been infinitely helpful so far. Why don't we just ask Koenma himself to help us? He's always been my best friend, I can't imagine him refusing us the assistance!"

"No, Koenma would just have you returned to demon world."

"You think?"

"I was thinking someone more sympathetic to our cause."

"Someone sympathetic to our cause? From spirit world? Are you out of your mind – oh wait, yes, you are out of your mind, because, up until yesterday, you were in a place for people who are crazy, which you clearly are!"

"Let's ask Botan to help us."

Hiei's anger vanished in an instant.

"She will know, better than anyone, who the weakest link in the SDF is," Shuichi continued. "And she will possibly even know how they were able to reach Kuwabara's thoughts. Actually, I wonder why you had not thought of asking Botan for help before now."

"Well I…" Hiei began. "I can't. I'm trying to hide from spirit world."

"So?"

"So Botan is a ferry girl, you infinite idiot!"

"Yes, I understand that you might think she would side with Koenma and spirit world, but she is also a friend of Kuwabara, and I know it pained her to see what became of him and how Yukina was treated so unfairly at the time of the erection of the Kakai Barrier. I am confident that she would help us if we asked her to."

"It's too dangerous."

"How so?"

"If she helps us, spirit world would eventually find out, and she would be punished for treason. I won't do that to her."

"It might be our only option, Hiei."

Hiei glared at Shuichi, but the sorrowful look on his face made Hiei realise that the fox ear-wearing human was probably correct: involving Botan in their plans might yet prove necessary.

"I don't want to hurt her any more," he said quietly.

"She has a choice," Shuichi gently replied. "When we ask her, she can say no. If she agrees, then she knows the risks, and any harm she does come to won't be of your doing."

Hiei shook his head and Shuichi nodded.

"It's our only hope, Hiei," he said.

Hiei shook his head again.

"I'm sorry," Shuichi whispered.

Hiei wanted to argue with him, but he was starting to see that – even though he was a little bit crazy – Shuichi was right.

"Oh hey, Hiei!" Kuwabara said, emerging from the bathroom. "Hey Kurama."

Hiei and Shuichi nodded at him before turning back to each other. There was a long pause before Hiei and Shuichi both slowly changed their expressions.

"He just called me Kurama!" Shuichi whispered.

They both turned abruptly to Kuwabara, who was in the process of getting dressed, apparently oblivious to his error – his quite significant error.

"Um, Kuwabara?" Shuichi asked.

"Yeah?" Kuwabara said, turning to face him as he buttoned up his shirt.

"It's a…" Shuichi began.

"Hey, what's with the fox ears?" Kuwabara asked, smiling cheerfully. "You missing being Youko?"

Shuichi glanced at Hiei, the look of foolish optimism on his face almost infectious and Hiei had to fight the urge to smile himself.

"We were thinking about going to demon world, actually," Shuichi said. "But we can't. Because of the Kakai Barrier…"

Kuwabara nodded knowingly.

"Yeah, it's back up, huh?" he said, picking up his tie. "So uh, how come you guys are still here, anyway? I thought you were already in demon world when the SDF came and… When… And…"

The tie slowly slid through Kuwabara's fingers and his eyes wandered downwards, his eyebrows coming together into a frown. Shuichi grinned idiotically at Hiei, but Hiei ignored him, something about the look on Kuwabara's face worrying him.

"Yes, Kuwabara, the Kakai Barrier is back up," Shuichi said. "And we need you to cut it down for us."

Kuwabara looked down at his right hand, slowly moving his left hand over to grab onto his wrist. The palm of his right hand started to glow and Shuichi grinned at Hiei again, but again Hiei felt that something worrying was about to happen. The glow grew in intensity before zapping outwards and taking the form of a sword.

"Kuwabara?" Shuichi said, taking a step towards him.

"Don't do it," Hiei said.

Shuichi looked at him curiously, which only proved to Hiei that he had failed to sense what seemed to be happening.

"Just calm down," Hiei said.

"You're telling me to calm down?" Kuwabara snapped, his eyes suddenly on Hiei. "You're the most violent guy I know! And maybe you didn't hear about it, but Yukina was taken away from the living world against her will, and I have to get her back!"

Kuwabara turned and ran to the apartment door, opening the lock.

"Wait!" Hiei shouted.

"At least put on some pants or shoes first!" Shuichi added.

Kuwabara ignored them both, tearing open the door with enough force to loosen the hinges, and then running off down the stairs, his sword glowing brilliantly in his hand. Shuichi ran to the window and Hiei followed after him, and together they watched as Kuwabara – dressed only in a shirt and boxer shorts – ran barefoot down the middle of the road, yelling out something that made Shuichi smile and Hiei curse.

"Hold on Yukina my love, I'm coming!"

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei has to play negotiator to stop Kuwabara from fleeing to demon world and acting irrationally, Hiei finally realises that he needs a solid plan if he is to successfully rescue Yukina and keep her safe, and the answer to his problems comes from a most unexpected source: but unfortunately, putting the plan into action proves harder than he had anticipated. **Chapter 38: The Raw Materials**

 **A/N:** Hanamichi Sakuragi is the main character of the anime/manga Slam Dunk, and he looks EXACTLY like Kuwabara (for anyone who didn't already know – Google the name, you'll see what I mean!


	38. The Raw Materials

**Recap:** Hiei freed Shuichi, Shuichi pointed out that Kuwabara could still have had his chance to become a success in the norm reality if Hiei had been more observant, Hiei managed to restore Kuwabara's lost memories, but doing so sent Kuwabara into a panic as he tried to get to Yukina.

* * *

 **Chapter 38: The Raw Materials**

"Don't make me have to beat the sense into you, because I will. And I'll rather enjoy doing it, too."

"Screw you, Hiei! Get out of my way or I'll be the one beating sense into you!"

"You need to calm down and think this through, idiot! You can't just go running off into demon world after Yukina! For a start, there's a war going on there and you'll be killed! And do you even know where the ice village is or how to find it?"

Kuwabara, who was red in the face and his eyes aflame with passion, thrust his free hand into the air, his fingers tightly curled into a fist save for his pinkie, which he was holding stiffly erect.

"Up yours too!" Hiei roared indignantly. "And that's the wrong finger, idiot!"

"I don't expect you to understand, Hiei!" Kuwabara sneered. "My little finger has the red thread of fate tied around it, and the other end it connected to Yukina's beautiful little finger, and it allows me to find her no matter where she is. Now get out of my way, you little mouse!"

Kuwabara took a step forwards but Hiei did not move other than to raise his right arm. Kuwabara faltered ever so slightly as his eyes travelled over the black dragon wound around Hiei's arm, but he recovered quickly.

"Go ahead!" he yelled. "It doesn't matter! I'll take on your dragon, and I'll send it back to chew on your ass, because I have the power of love helping me to–"

Kuwabara was cut off by a smack to the back of his head that was delivered with enough force to make his sword flicker and diminish in size as he stumbled forwards, almost falling to the ground.

"Calm down!" Shizuru yelled at him.

"Get outta my way, Shizuru!" Kuwabara recovered. "Don't you remember what happened to Yukina?"

"Of course we do!" Keiko said, leaping in between Hiei and Kuwabara. "But Hiei's right: you can't just go running off to demon world on your own! You don't know your way around and you could get yourself killed, and then we'll never manage to rescue Yukina!"

Kuwabara softened slightly and Shuichi hurriedly stepped forwards.

"That's right," he said. "We need to come up with a plan if this is to work. Of us all, only Hiei knows where the ice village is, and only he knows how to get there. It is a long and arduous journey, you could not manage it alone, and you must remember that you need to plan for the return journey as well: you need to take a secure route once you have Yukina with you, and that's something that no amount of red thread can help you with."

"Yes, and if you go in there and take Yukina back here, the SDF might catch you," Keiko added. "And it took us so long and so much hard work to fix what they did to you the first time, who knows what they might do a second time? They might even kill you!"

"And you're no use to us dead, little bro," Shizuru said.

"So please, put your sword away, calm down, and let's talk," Shuichi said.

Kuwabara glared at Hiei, but complied with Shuichi's request and relaxed his hand, his sword fading out of existence.

"What the hell is he doing here anyway?" he asked, pointing at Hiei. "I thought he was banned from here after he killed Botan."

"He didn't kill Botan, you idiot!" Keiko yelled.

Even Hiei was taken aback by how passionately she appeared to be defending him.

"It was just an accident!" she said. "Hiei knows it was wrong, he regrets not going back for her and he's trying to set things right, so just drop it already!"

"Um…" Kuwabara began, frowning curiously at Keiko. "Okay Keiko, if you say so…"

Keiko nodded firmly and Kuwabara relaxed his shoulders.

"I still don't get how Hiei and Kurama are here though," he said. "How did they get through the Kakai Barrier? I mean, Hiei was definitely in demon world when it was put up, and I thought Kurama went back there too. Hey, if they're both here, is Urameshi here too?"

Kuwabara looked around the faces watching him before settling on Keiko again.

"No," Shuichi answered him. "Only Hiei has returned to this realm. He was able to bypass the barrier by alternative means. Yusuke and Kurama are still in demon world."

Kuwabara pulled a face at him.

"But you're Kurama," he said. "How can you be in demon world if…?"

His voice trailed off as Shuichi began shaking his head.

"Kurama has reverted back to his full demon form and left this body," he explained. "I am but Shuichi Minamino."

Kuwabara nodded his head twice, paused and then shook his head repeatedly.

"I don't get it," he confessed.

"Of course you don't, you're an idiot," Hiei muttered.

"Shut-up, Hiei!" Kuwabara snapped at him. "And hey, if you know where the ice village is, and you know a way around the Kakai Barrier, why didn't you rescue Yukina before now, huh? You're still a selfish little jerk!"

"Back off, Kuwabara!" Keiko shouted, again surprising Hiei. "Hiei's helping us! Shuichi was in an insane asylum and Hiei freed him! And Hiei was the one who figured out how to get your memories back! He wants to rescue Yukina, but he knows we have to do it the right way! Don't be mean to him, he's trying to help us!"

Kuwabara screwed up his face at Hiei.

"I don't get it," he said. "Hiei never does anything unless there's something in it for him."

"He's helping us because he wants to rescue Yukina, and he understands that to do that, we all need to work together!" Keiko insisted.

"That doesn't seem like something that would motivate Hiei…" Kuwabara said slowly.

"He wants to help Yukina because she's his sister," Shuichi said bluntly, earning himself horrified glares from both Hiei and Kuwabara. "And also, he's in love with Botan."

Hiei started to stomp towards Shuichi, readying himself to execute him for the crime of his idiocy.

"You're Yukina's brother?" Kuwabara wailed, stopping him in his tracks. "Wait, is this a joke? Because you're a fire demon, so it's impossible that you came from the ice village, and there's no way you're in love with Botan, since you let her die because you said you didn't even know who she was…"

"He's been visiting other realities," Keiko said, again surprising Hiei. "And he visited one where he was married to Botan, and I guess it made him realise he was wrong about her."

"What did you tell her that for?" Hiei demanded, turning to Shuichi.

"I didn't tell her that," Shuichi replied.

"You tell everybody everything, you idiot!" Hiei snapped back. "You lack the ability to control what comes out of your mouth! That's why you ended up in a mental hospital to begin with, and still you haven't learned your lesson!"

"He didn't tell me," Keiko interrupted them.

Hiei turned to her and she sighed.

"Botan told me," she admitted. "We kept in touch after everything went wrong with the war and all. And she told me because I obviously saw you appearing here in the living world even though that should have been impossible. I kept asking her how you had done it, because I thought that if you could do it, Yusuke should be able to do it too. So she told me the truth. She told me Mukuro was sending you to alternate realities, and that you went to one where you were married to her, and ever since then you'd been… Well, you know what you've been doing…"

Hiei felt his mind going blank, the last coherent thought he experienced being that he ought to be furious at Keiko for her telling everyone about his life as though she had the right to.

"When was the last time you saw Botan?" he asked her instead.

She faltered visibly but then tried to cover it with a look of thoughtfulness: but it was too late, as Hiei had already seen that she was readying herself to answer him with a lie.

"I see her every now and then," she replied casually. "Usually when she's working in the same area as me."

Hiei wanted to put his jagan eye to good use and rip out the complete truth from her brain, but something made him stop. He was not sure what it was: was it a sense of restraint, returning the favour of taking a chance on Keiko as she had done on him, or was it just that he was slightly afraid to find out exactly what she was being so evasive about?

There was a good chance, after all, that Botan had decided to become Koenma's wife anyway, and did he really want to know about that?

"I don't feel well," Kuwabara said suddenly.

Shizuru and Shuichi hurried to him, taking one of his arms each and pulling them around their shoulders to help keep him upright as his face paled.

"Hey…" he said. "Hey Hiei? What actually… I mean where are Urameshi and Kurama now? Are they really full demons now?"

Hiei nodded.

"They are the generals of their own respective armies," he explained. "And opposing each other in the war."

"They're fighting against each other?" Kuwabara echoed. "But why? And if they are fighting against each other, whose side are you on?"

"Neither," Hiei answered. "It's a three-sided battle. Yusuke and his people are on one side, Kurama and Yomi's people are on another side and Mukuro's people and I are on a third side."

"You've been fighting Urameshi and Kurama?"

"Not exactly. Not yet, anyway."

Kuwabara looked around the others worriedly before looking down at himself.

"I'm late for work," he said. "And I don't have any pants or shoes on. And I'm confused. And I feel sick…"

"Yes, that's a side-effect of taking such a strong dose of that flower pollen," Hiei told him.

The others all gave Hiei dark looks but he ignored them.

"I need to lie down," Kuwabara said, slouching heavier against his sister and Shuichi.

"Okay, let's get you back home," Shizuru said.

"I feel so weird," he groaned as Shizuru and Shuichi walked him around in an arc to take him back the way he had come. "Everything's a mess. I can remember that I couldn't remember things, and it's really confusing."

"You just need a little time," Shuichi assured him.

"Everything's so weird though," Kuwabara said as they walked on. "You're not really Kurama? You look just like him and you sound just like him."

"I'm Shuichi," Shuichi reminded him. "Kurama's soul was in my body. The physical presence you can see and hear is the same person."

"…And Kurama's a fox now?"

"Yes."

"Whoa… And what about Urameshi? Did he grow out his hair and get those weird markings again?"

"I don't know about that, I haven't seen him since he left the living world."

"But Kurama has seen him in demon world, right?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

"…But didn't you used to be Kurama?"

"Yes, but not any more."

"…Talking to you is making my head hurt."

"Then let's not talk any more."

"But I have so many questions! Does anybody know how Yukina is? And what happened to Botan? Hey, wait a minute… Why is-ow!"

"Oops," Shizuru said, sounding even less apologetic than she looked after quite obviously deliberately standing on Kuwabara's bare foot.

"Watch where you're putting your big feet, Shizuru!" he moaned.

"Big feet?" she snapped.

They began bickering between themselves and Hiei stopped walking, letting everyone else get far enough ahead of him that he could no longer make out the individual words being said. He was relieved that he had managed to stop Kuwabara running off – because he suspected that he would have cut down the Kakai Barrier to get to demon world, forgetting that he, as a human, could easily pass through it without destroying it, and that would only have alerted spirit world to what was really going on. But Kuwabara's recovery did also point to a few things Hiei realised then that he had not really given due consideration to: like, primarily, exactly how he was going to get to the ice village, collect Yukina and take her back to the living world without spirit world either sealing him in, catching Yukina and sending her back to the ice world or simply being hindered to the point of disaster by the ice maidens themselves, who would never allow him to just walk away with one of their own.

Shuichi was right: he needed a better plan.

Unfortunately however, he was out of good ideas.

* * *

Hiei and Shuichi – being the only ones fast enough and fit enough to have kept up with him as he ran up the temple steps – walked slowly behind Kuwabara as he approached the remains of the old lady's temple.

"I can't believe this," he said quietly. "What the hell happened here?"

"It's truly awful," Shuichi said. "I had no idea."

Hiei turned to Shuichi, pulling a face at him, but as he remembered that he had been removed from society for several years, the temple had probably fallen into ruin in his absence, and so he was bound to be as surprised as Kuwabara was to see it again.

"I always wondered why I kept getting on that damn bus," Kuwabara said. "A part of me was still coming here to see Yukina. A part of me still thought the temple was still here and so was Yukina."

"Why did this happen?" Shuichi asked.

"Yeah, why did this happen?" Kuwabara asked.

Hiei stopped abruptly as both men turned to him with almost accusing glares.

"I don't know!" he snapped defensively. "I was in demon world when it happened! I got banned from coming here and then the Kakai Barrier went up and I couldn't come here!"

"We should ask Keiko," Shuichi suggested to Kuwabara.

"Or Botan," Kuwabara said. "She'd probably know. She ought to know everything that's being going on, here in the living world and in demon world, right?"

Hiei tensed as he realised that Kuwabara was directing his question towards him.

"How the hell would I know?" he asked.

"I dunno," Kuwabara said with a shrug. "Didn't you say something about Botan being your wife now?"

Hiei sighed and Shuichi quickly stepped between them.

"You misunderstand, Kuwabara," he said. "And we shouldn't worry about that right now. Let us first assess the situation here, and we can discuss other matters at another time."

Kuwabara nodded and they continued on to the temple entrance. Kuwabara continued remarking on the amount of damage and how disgraceful it was and Shuichi became increasingly quiet and pale. Hiei cursed and swung his sword at every spider-web, insect or piece of animal waste he came close to. Eventually they reached the display cabinet that had once housed the antique swords, and all three instinctively stopped there and looked up at it in silence. The moment dragged on, but all three remained still, only turning away from the broken cabinet when they heard Keiko, Shizuru and Maya catching up to them.

"You guys run far too fast, it's not fair!" Keiko complained.

"Hey Keiko, what happened here?" Kuwabara asked her.

She gave him a slightly flat look, but when he did not respond she relaxed her features again.

"Are you asking about the entire temple, or just the weapons that used to be on display here?" she asked him.

"Both," he said.

Keiko's face straightened out again.

"Why don't you start by telling us about the weapons?" Shuichi suggested.

"We sold them," she replied.

"You did what?" Hiei echoed.

"We sold them," she repeated. "We had to. We couldn't afford the costs of upkeep on this place. At first we used the money Genkai left to pay for it, but that ran out quite quickly, and after that, we all had to contribute from our own money. When Yusuke left my parents' restaurant, he obviously stopped contributing money, and the business took a downturn that meant I had to give up my job and my home, and I don't receive a salary any more, I just live with my parents and they pay for everything with what they have left, so I didn't have anything to contribute either. Yukina used to make things for us to sell for money – not hiruiseki before you ask, Hiei – I mean cakes and blankets. It wasn't much but it helped, and after she left we lost that contribution too. Kurama, coming from a wealthy family, contributed quite a lot, but after he left that stopped too. Kuwabara couldn't remember what this place was and who we were, so we couldn't convince him to contribute any more, which meant that only Shizuru could put any money towards it. Shizuru and I came up here and took out everything that was valuable and sold it all: the arcade games, the weapons, the statues, even the fish from the ponds. We used the money to keep the place, but it got harder because we were the only ones able to check on it, and because we both worked long hours, we often didn't come out here for weeks at a time, and of course the place started to deteriorate. At first it was just a bit of weather damage. Then it was some graffiti. Then the animals got in. Then the squatters. Then the fire. We kept paying for repairs, and eventually the money we had disappeared and we had to give up. Before this place was guarded by Puu and the demons that lived in the forest. But when the SDF did their purge of this area, they got rid of all of that, and people gradually started to realise that it was safe to come up here, and so they did. And this is what they did to the place."

"It's truly awful," Shuichi said. "Obviously this had not happened in paradise?"

The others all gave him a strange look and then redirected their questioning gazes to Hiei as they realised that Shuichi had addressed the question to him.

"You're an idiot," Hiei told him. "And you're still wearing those stupid fucking ears!"

"They help me stay in character," Shuichi whispered to Kuwabara.

"Idiot!" Hiei growled.

"We need to fix this place back up," Kuwabara said. "This was Genkai's home, and it's her legacy. I say we all put together our money and our heads and we fix this."

"We can't," Shizuru said. "I appreciate the sentiment Kazuma, but none of us have any money left to put together, least of all the amount of money it would take to fix the damage that has now been done."

"It would never look the same again anyway," Keiko added. "We sold off everything so long ago, we could never get it back."

"Who did you sell it to?" Hiei asked.

"We sold the arcade games to a local games collector," Shizuru said.

"We sold the fish to a local aquatics dealer," Keiko said.

"And we sold the antiques to a local antique dealer," Shizuru said.

Hiei glanced at the demolished display cabinet.

"Did you sell everything?" he asked. "Did anything get stolen?"

"We sold everything," Keiko confirmed.

"Even all of the weapons in this cabinet?" Hiei asked.

She nodded.

"That must have made a lot of money," Kuwabara pointed out.

"It did," Shizuru replied. "But we needed it to replace parts of the roof that were damaged in a storm, and to clean up the graffiti, to feed the fish, to keep the gardens…"

"It's true that we might not ever get back the things that were sold," Shuichi said. "But we could certainly rebuild the temple itself and restore the gardens, steps and gate."

"Are you gonna pay for that?" Keiko asked him sarcastically.

"Not me, no," he replied. "But I have an idea of who might."

"It would take a ridiculous amount of money to fix all of this," Shizuru pointed out.

"Or just a ridiculous amount of hard work," Maya said.

The other turned to her and she smiled in spite of their critical looks.

"Surely between us all we could replace a few floorboards and re-plaster a few walls?" she asked meekly.

"And rebuild an entire wing of the temple?" Keiko asked.

"It probably wouldn't be as hard as you think, actually," Kuwabara said, rubbing his chin in thought. "Buying the raw materials would be the most difficult part if we don't have much money…"

"Of course!" Shuichi said cheerfully. "You could assess the structure of what remains and you would know what can be fixed and what would need to be torn down and replaced from the foundations up."

"That sounds expensive…" Keiko said.

"It doesn't need to be," Maya said.

"She's right, y'know," Kuwabara said. "We probably could fix a lot of this. It wouldn't cost us much to buy some paint stripper and clean off the graffiti, and that would make a major difference."

"And you have a plentiful supply of free wood around you," Shuichi added. "Some of the trees in this forest are perfectly proportioned and of the correct strength to be cut down and used as floorboards or roof beams."

"I have a chainsaw," Shizuru offered.

"Why the hell do you have a chainsaw?" Kuwabara asked her.

"Because I never know when I might need it," she replied, smiling darkly at him and making him shiver fearfully.

"Shut-up!" Hiei barked. "All of you, just shut-up! You're all being ridiculous! Open your fucking eyes and look around you: this place is well beyond repair. And the time, money and effort it would take to fix it would be better used rescuing Yukina – which is what we're meant to be concentrating on! I only agreed to come here so that you could all understand that this isn't the right place to hide Yukina from the SDF!"

"The little shrimp's right," Kuwabara said, ignoring the glare his insult earned himself from Hiei. "We have to think about Yukina, she's our priority right now. I can feel that she isn't happy…"

Kuwabara started to hold up his pinkie but Hiei promptly slapped his hand down again.

"If you stick your finger up like that again, I will break it off of your hand," he warned him.

Kuwabara started to argue with Hiei but stopped as he appeared to remember something.

"Right, yeah, sorry Hiei," he said. "But you know, I'm a good guy, I've always been good to Yukina, and–"

"You're wasting time again," Hiei cut him off.

"Right," Kuwabara said. "So where can we hide Yukina that she'll definitely be safe from the SDF?"

"I don't know," Hiei replied. "You have to tell me. I'm not an expert on living world matters. It must be somewhere she can go undetected though."

"Would they really bother coming after her again?" Keiko asked.

"Of course they would, they're bastards," Shizuru replied. "Honestly, I don't know that there is anywhere we can hide her."

"If I'm cutting open the Kakai Barrier, they're gonna notice, and they'll be on our backs right away," Kuwabara pointed out.

"Which is why I must be the one to go to the ice village," Hiei insisted. "I'm the fastest, I know the way, and I'm the strongest. And the ice maidens fear me."

"Won't they put up a fight if they fear you?" Shizuru asked. "And won't that slow you down?"

"Yeah and you can't kill any of them," Kuwabara said. "It would upset Yukina."

"And you can't use your dragon at any point, because you would then be too exhausted to return, and Yukina would be left stranded in demon world," Shuichi pointed out.

"I'm coming with you," Kuwabara said to Hiei.

"You'll slow me down!" Hiei argued. "We don't have enough time for that! As soon as you open the barrier, the SDF will be deployed to your location. We'll be lucky if we have enough time to get to the ice village, rescue Yukina, get her back here and hide her before they catch up to us!"

"Maybe Kuwabara shouldn't cut down the barrier at all then," Shuichi suggested. "Maybe Kuwabara and I should go to demon world. We can both pass through the barrier. If you told us where to go, we could go and bring Yukina back."

"That's the worst idea yet!" Hiei yelled. "You'd both get killed before you even got close to the ice village! If you weren't caught by demons before you got there, the ice maidens would surely kill you themselves! They guard their village fiercely, especially against men!"

"In that case, won't you be in danger going there too?" Keiko asked him.

"Ice attacks are useless against me, I'm a fire demon, idiot," Hiei sarcastically replied.

"Oh yeah, that's true," Kuwabara said. "I remember when you fought Seiryu, and–"

"We don't have time to reminisce," Hiei cut him off. "The time for talking is over. It's time for action."

"Foolish actions will set us back further," Shuichi warned. "We run the risk of the SDF once more taking Kuwabara's memories and them locking you into demon world again. We must tread carefully."

"Stop pretending to be Kurama!" Hiei yelled at him.

"He sort of is Kurama, though," Kuwabara said. "I remember Kurama always said he was partly Shuichi, and that was why he wasn't so cruel as he was when he was fully Youko Kurama, so in a way–"

"Don't try to be clever, it doesn't suit you."

Hiei sighed heavily, looking at the faces around him and the mess they were standing in.

"This was a bad decision," he concluded, before picking his way between them and quickly making his way back outside.

The sense of hopelessness that had been nagging at the back of his mind suddenly rushed to the forefront of his thoughts and he found himself wanting to just go back to demon world and finish what he had started before Mukuro sent him back to paradise. The only thing that stopped him doing that was Yukina. He took himself into the forest and then removed his bandana, using his third eye to search out his sister once more, finding her still looking exactly the same as she had since her return to the ice village: alone, miserable, hopeless and lost.

Hiei replaced his bandana and lifted his head, seeing the sunlight spilling through the trees in an all-too-familiar way. He stepped back and sat down with his back resting against a tree trunk, his head tilted back watching the tree branches swaying lightly in the wind. He was looking at the place his house was meant to be in, but of course it was not there – and never would be – in this, the dystopia reality.

"This is a lovely part of the forest, isn't it?"

Hiei tensed at the sound of the gentle voice behind him. He did not want to turn around, and when he heard the movements of someone sitting down on the other side of the tree from him he was saved the bother, as he could no longer see the source of the voice anyway.

"Is this where your house was?"

"Go away," Hiei grumbled.

"I have an idea," Shuichi replied, ignoring Hiei's last remark. "Would you like to hear it?"

"I'd rather "cuddle" Kuwabara's feline monstrosity he calls "Eikichi"," Hiei drawled sarcastically.

"I think we should ask Kuwabara to build the tree-house."

Hiei sighed and rolled his eyes. Shuichi really was infuriating, and why could he not take a simple – and blatant – hint?

"You said the tree-house won Kuwabara the right to build the wooden house on legs, yes?" he continued.

Hiei did not bother answering him.

"And, according to this, the owner of the wooden house on legs is looking for someone to build him another house."

Shuichi placed down the poster they had taken from Kuwabara's office block at his side. Hiei glanced down at it before shaking his head in disbelief at Shuichi's stupidity.

"So if Kuwabara builds the tree-house and that man sees it, Kuwabara should win the contract to build that man's next house," Shuichi said.

Hiei snorted and started to tell Shuichi what a stupid bastard he truly was, but stopped as he realised that what the human had said actually made quite a lot of sense. It was not in the least bit helpful or useful, but it did make sense.

"You said building just the one house for that man made Kuwabara wealthy," Shuichi continued. "So if he wins that contract in this reality, he will be wealthy here and now, and he can afford to restore this temple, and Yukina can live here."

"But that still doesn't protect her from the SDF," Hiei pointed out. "No amount of money ever will!"

"Well maybe if Kuwabara becomes famous and is always surrounded by other people, the SDF will stay away from him and Yukina. You only need to keep her safe until the war ends, right?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Who's to say that Koenma will sanction the removal of the Kakai Barrier when the war ends? He might decide to keep things as they are even if the war does end, and there's no saying that what I do in demon world will definitely end the war, least of all straight away."

"I see. It is a very complex problem. Hiding Yukina is perhaps the most difficult part of the process. And I'm afraid that I'm out of ideas now, my good friend."

"I'm not your good friend."

"My apologies."

Hiei sighed, looking up at the shafts of sunlight illuminating the treetops. He felt something strange shifting somewhere in the back of his mind, and he found his eyes wandering down to the poster still resting on the ground at his side. He slowly studied it, and the feeling started to grow until finally he understood what it was.

"This is it," he said quietly.

"What?" Shuichi asked, leaning around the tree to look at him.

"This," Hiei said, jabbing a finger into the centre of the poster. "This is it… Did you say we're too late for this competition?"

"We're too late for the preliminary round," Shuichi replied. "But I asked Kuwabara about it, and he said the man himself is coming to this city in two weeks' time to visit the company Kuwabara works for to view their plans and to meet their employees. I thought that we could intercept that meeting and try to convince him to award the contract to Kuwabara instead."

"How long does it take to build a tree-house?" Hiei asked.

"I have no idea," Shuichi replied. "If we all helped it could be done very quickly, I imagine."

"Within two weeks?" Hiei asked.

"Maybe… So does this mean that you've decided to help Kuwabara improve his life?"

"No, I know how to keep Yukina safe."

Hiei grabbed up the poster and ran off, ignoring Shuichi's yells for him to slow down. He skidded to a halt by the broken ponds where the others had gathered, slapping the posted against a broken section of wall and pointing at it.

"This is the answer," he said.

"What?" Kuwabara echoed.

"This is it," Hiei said. "We have to do this. If we do this, Yukina will be safe."

"…I don't get it," Kuwabara said.

"Neither do I," Shuichi said as he joined them.

"This man is offering a contract to build a house for him," Hiei explained. "But it's not in this part of the living world. It's a loophole in spirit world law, and we can exploit it to our advantage!"

"…I still don't get it," Kuwabara said.

"In another reality, you became rich and famous because you built a house for this man," Hiei explained. "And the reason he commissioned you was because he saw the tree-house you built here."

"You built a house for him in another reality?" Keiko asked Kuwabara.

"Are you sure about that?" Shizuru asked Hiei.

"Absolutely," Hiei replied. "If you build the tree-house here and now, you can still win the contract advertised in this poster."

"Really?" Keiko asked. "Wow Kuwabara, imagine that?"

"I don't get why you would want to help me like that…" Kuwabara said, eying Hiei over suspiciously.

"I'm not doing it for you, idiot," Hiei said slowly. "I'm doing it for Yukina."

"Because if I was wealthy I could provide for her?" Kuwabara asked.

"More than that," Hiei said. "This contract will require you to leave this part of the living world for a period of several months, which will hopefully be long enough for the war to stop in demon world and the SDF to give up chasing Yukina. The part of the living world this contract is in isn't governed by the spirit world that we know, it's overseen by another ruler of another faction of the afterlife, and Koenma and the SDF don't have any power there. The complications of them trying to pursue you to that part of the living world or even simply trying to get the authorities there to hunt you down is too great. They can't touch you or Yukina once you get there. This is the answer we've been looking for."

The others all looked shocked and confused.

"How did you know all of that?" Keiko asked.

"I must confess that I too am surprised, Hiei," Shuichi added. "You're talking about spirit world politics: what do you know of such matters?"

Hiei smirked.

"Let's just say I spent a little too long inside the head of someone who knows more about politics, laws and negotiating his way around them than anyone else in all of the three worlds," he said.

Kuwabara nodded slowly.

"So, uh, what were you saying about building a tree-house?" he asked.

"You have to build the tree-house," Hiei replied. "And you don't have long, so get to it. It needs to be finished before this man comes to your office."

Kuwabara's face twisted.

"Well, I guess building a little kiddie's tree-house shouldn't take that long," he said with a shrug.

"It's not a kiddie's house, it's a full-size adult house, with a walkway round the outside and an open area in the centre," Hiei replied.

"Why would you build a house like that in a tree?" Kuwabara asked.

"It's not in one tree, it's built between several trees!"

"So it's just a normal house built in the woods?"

"No, it's a tree-house!"

"…I don't get it."

Hiei started to lose the brief feeling of hope he had been enjoying.

"Follow me," he said.

He turned and stomped back into the forest, stopping by the tree with the unique pattern in its bark.

"Here," he said.

He flinched slightly when he saw that everyone had followed him and not just Kuwabara.

"Here?" Kuwabara echoed. "You can't build a house here, Hiei, it would be too much work! The roots of the trees run deep into the ground, digging for foundations would be–"

"You don't dig for foundations, idiot!" Hiei cut him off. "You build the house up in the trees!"

"What?" Kuwabara asked. "How is that even possible?"

"Oh fuck…" Hiei sighed. "I should have known you were too useless to make this work…"

"I'm trying to buy into what you're saying Hiei, but it's impossible!" Kuwabara said.

"Perhaps not," Shuichi said, tilting his head slightly to one side.

"You don't get to have an opinion on this," Hiei warned him.

"Some of these trees are slow-growing, they could be cut into and used as support beams," Shuichi suggested.

"You never listen to me," Hiei moaned. "And what you said was stupid, but it did remind me of something. Kuwabara, in the other reality you said you got the idea for the house after you saw me climb a tree, so watch me carefully."

Hiei hopped up the tree with the unusual pattern in its bark, stopping on the highest substantial branch he could reach and looking down at Kuwabara.

"Can you see it yet?" he called down to him.

"See what?"

Hiei sighed, leaning against the tree trunk. He heard movement beneath him, but he did not bother looking down to check what was happening. Everyone in this reality was so hopeless, he thought miserably. If they could not even help themselves to a better life, what was the point of him trying to do it for them? He looked down at the poster still in his hand. It was a good idea, and it would have worked, but unless Kuwabara could smarten up and the others somehow all learned how to build a decent house, there was no hope for any of them.

After some time stood up in the tree Hiei made his way back down, finding only Kuwabara still there, drawing something onto some loose leaves of paper. Hiei had no idea where he had found paper and a pencil, but he seemed quite focused on what he was doing, and hope started to return to Hiei: perhaps Kuwabara had eventually seen what he was meant to have and begun drawing out designs for the tree-house after all.

"Oh hey Hiei," Kuwabara greeted him. "I was just sketching out some stuff. I thought I might get some ideas if I did this."

Hiei craned his neck to look at what he had been working on and quickly regretted his decision as he saw nothing more than a series of increasingly ridiculous caricatures of himself in the tree.

"I hate you so much, Kuwabara," he growled.

"Hey, I'm trying my hardest here!" Kuwabara protested.

"You're supposed to be designing a… Forget it. I should have known better than to trust anyone else but myself."

Hiei walked on, realising as he went that he was only going to have to go back to Kuwabara's apartment and spend another night with the idiot and his cat.

"Fucking dystopia…" he grumbled.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei awakens to a big surprise the next morning, he has a strange encounter with a certain ferry girl, Shuichi has some ideas for how to proceed with rescuing Yukina and Hiei has a spooky moment of déjà vu that leaves him questioning a few things about his own reality. **Chapter 39 – The Skill**


	39. The Skills

**Recap:** Kuwabara got his memories back and was determined to get Yukina back too, but the others managed to calm him down. Everyone went to Genkai's temple where Keiko explained how it had fallen into ruin, and Shuichi managed to convince Hiei that building the tree-house was a good idea. Hiei tried to kick-start Kuwabara into designing the house, but his efforts were fruitless (and he blamed that on his own reality being a failure).

* * *

 **Chapter 39: The Skills**

Hiei awoke the next morning and saw two things that immediately caused him concern: first of all, the horrid wretch of a cat was sleeping on his ankles and secondly Kuwabara's bed was folded away as though he had risen and left for the day already. Hiei sat up and snarled at the cat, sending it fleeing in fear. He then swung his legs over the side of the couch and yawned. He stood up, looked about himself and saw absolutely no sign of Kuwabara, confirming that he was not hiding somewhere. He started towards the kitchen area and reached for the fridge, his hand stopping just short of the door-handle as he realised that Kuwabara's absence was more significant than he was giving it credit for.

Kuwabara had not left the apartment that morning: Kuwabara had never returned to the apartment the night before.

"Fuck!" Hiei cursed.

Obviously the idiot had decided to defy everyone else's advice and just go to demon world anyway and rescue Yukina – probably taking that prick Shuichi with him – and by now they had probably either been killed or apprehended by the pesky Special Defence Force. It was like babysitting: he could not let the idiots out of his sight for one night without them doing something incredibly stupid and selfish.

Hiei quickly used his jagan eye to find out exactly where Kuwabara was, only waiting long enough to determine that he was at the ruined temple. He did not pause on the sight, mostly because it had showed him Kuwabara without a shirt and a stupid bandana tied around his head proclaiming that he was the "warrior of love", and he quickly fled the apartment, crossed the city and tore up the temple steps, slowing as he reached the temple gate and sounds of activity reached his ears, confusing and surprising him. He almost did not believe what they were, and that alone kept him moving onwards towards their source.

When the scent of freshly cut wood, exhaust fumes and oil reached him, Hiei's ability to doubt what seemed to be happening lessened further still.

And when he moved into the forest beyond the temple, he saw something that gave him that strange tugging feeling in his chest again.

"Oh, hey Hiei!" Kuwabara called over to him, waving cheerfully at him.

"What the hell is going on here?" Hiei asked, moving over to join him.

"Isn't it obvious?" Shuichi asked, appearing at his side suddenly.

Hiei paused long enough to eye Shuichi over: he was dressed in baggy workman's pants, heavy steel-toed boots, a workman's shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, he had large leather gloves on and safety glasses, yet he had finished the look off by tying his long red hair up in a twisted, pretty fashion more befitting of a woman, and he was still wearing those stupid fake fox ears.

"We're building the tree-house," Kuwabara said, smiling cheerfully.

"You can't just randomly cut down trees and throw them together in any old manner!" Hiei warned him.

"We didn't cut them down randomly," Shuichi said. "Kuwabara and I measured out an approximate area a full-sized family house would need and then assessed which trees would be best suited to mount the house onto. From there, we cut inwards. See, I put a red cross on the trees I thought were most suitable to mount the house onto."

Hiei turned around in a complete circle, seeing that the trees that were still standing around the perimeter of the clearing that had been created were all marked with red crosses made of paper and pinned to them. The trees themselves looked vaguely familiar, and as he took a little longer to survey his surroundings in more detail, Hiei saw an increasing number of things that looked almost worryingly good: Maya was pouring something into the remaining stumps of the trees they had cut down, presumably to kill off the roots and stop the trees growing again beneath where the house would be, Shizuru was using a chainsaw to hack branches off of the fallen trees to prepare them for being cut for wood and Keiko was gathering up the discarded branches and sorting them into two piles, one of small and useless pieces and one of larges pieces that might be used for wood.

"I was just trimming these trees back," Shuichi added, starting to climb a nearby tree. "I'm pruning the branches so that the regrowth will be angled away from the house itself."

Hiei noticed that about a quarter of the trees around the perimeter had been cut back to be almost flat on their inside, and the stumps left were distinctly angled, which seemed to suggest that what Shuichi had just said was true and potentially sensible.

Apparently Shuichi was the tree expert he had claimed to be.

"We wanted to spend this weekend getting the groundwork done," Kuwabara told Hiei as they watched Shuichi continue his work. "I know a few places we could get additional materials from cheaply or on credit. I mean, we can probably get all the wood we need, but we'll still need windows, tools and hardware like nails, screws and brackets."

"This sounds very sensible," Hiei said, looking over the three women diligently working away before turning back to Kuwabara.

"Yeah," Kuwabara said with a shrug. "The hardest part'll be fixing up the electrics. We might need to get some help with that. The temple doesn't have a power supply any more, so we might not be able to fix it at all, but everything else might work. We don't have long, but I think we can do it. And this is gonna work, right? I mean, after this, we can get Yukina back, right?"

Hiei nodded.

"Assuming you do this right," he added.

"You've seen what this house was meant to look like in that other reality, right?" Kuwabara asked.

"Of course," Hiei replied.

"So have a look at this and see what you think."

Kuwabara passed him a folder of sketches, the first few of which made little sense to him at all: but as he moved through them, he started to see pictures that looked alarmingly like the tree-house of the paradise reality.

"Hn, it really was in your stupid head all this time," he muttered.

"Why do you always have to do that Hiei?" Kuwabara sighed. "You can't ever give someone a straight compliment, you've always gotta make it insulting too!"

"I see everyone is working on something here," Hiei said, passing the folder back to Kuwabara.

"Yeah, you wanna help?" Kuwabara asked.

"You all have your own roles, and I have mine," Hiei said.

Kuwabara's face started to change and Hiei took it to mean that he was starting to understand what he was getting at.

"Wh-what's your role?" Kuwabara asked cautiously.

"Director of operations," Hiei replied, unsheathing his sword.

"What does that do?" Kuwabara asked.

"I make sure the work gets done right and on time. Now get on with it, or die!"

Nobody seemed especially pleased with Hiei's threat: but, if his memory served him correctly, that other Hiei had done exactly the same thing in the paradise reality in order to get the tree-house built, and something told him that adopting some of that other Hiei's tactics might not be the terribly bad decision he had once thought it might be.

* * *

Eight days after construction of the tree-house had begun, Hiei found himself silently impressed with how much progress had actually been made. He would of course never tell anyone else how impressed he was with them – lest they slack off or think that he liked them in any way – but he was nonetheless surprised that a rag-tag group of humans had accomplished so much in such a short space of time. With the exception of Maya, they had all been present at the site from sunrise to sunset for the entire eight days. Shizuru and Kuwabara had called each other's bosses and claimed the other was ill, buying themselves the time off their day jobs to allow them to work on the tree-house full-time, Keiko had not exactly been needed at her parents' restaurant and Shuichi had no commitments to get out of.

"It's looks great already," Keiko said as they all stood by the edge of the forest looking in at the tree-house.

It did look good, Hiei thought to himself. It was mid-evening and the sunlight was still falling across the house, albeit at quite an acute angle, and even though the house was practically a hollow shell, it still looked almost exactly like it had done in paradise already: minus the window panes and the lanterns.

"Ah don't be fooled though, Keiko," Kuwabara said. "That's just the superstructure, that's the easy part. It's the substructure and interior that takes the most time to complete."

"When do the windows arrive?" Shuichi asked.

"Tomorrow morning," Kuwabara replied.

"What about the rest of the materials?" Shuichi asked. "Are we still alright for wood and–"

Shuichi stopped suddenly and Hiei frowned slightly as he heard Kuwabara and Keiko whispering frantically to each other and Shuichi. There was a long silence before Kuwabara loudly and awkwardly cleared his throat.

"Oh my…" Shuichi said a little too loudly. "Is that really the time? So late already? I should get going, my mother will be worried."

"You can't leave!" Keiko hissed at him.

"You can't stay!" he hissed back.

"Yeah I gotta…" Kuwabara said awkwardly. "Go… Somewhere…"

"Kazuma!" Shizuru whispered harshly.

"I, uh…" Maya began nervously.

"You should leave," Kuwabara whispered to her. "We all should."

"No!" Keiko said stubbornly.

Hiei sighed, turning around sharply to find out what the idiots were bickering about: they had all worked together quite well over the last week, even laughing when they had made mistakes or accidentally suffered minor injuries in the line of duty, and so, he thought, whatever it was that was dividing them now had better be something vastly significant.

Hiei's stiff look of disgust melted. Standing some distance behind them, watching them all quietly and expressionlessly, was Botan.

"We'll just leave you guys to uh… Talk and stuff…" Kuwabara said quietly.

Shuichi smiled at Hiei in an annoying way and began pushing Maya ahead of himself, walking towards the temple steps.

"Come on," Kuwabara said to Keiko and Shizuru.

After much glaring and sneering, Shizuru eventually went with Kuwabara, following Shuichi away from the whole area. Keiko watched them for a moment before glancing almost fearfully at Hiei and then running over to join Botan. She made a few erratic hand gestures and whispered a few things Hiei did not even attempt to make out, but Botan did not so much as blink throughout. Once Keiko had finally silenced herself, Botan turned her head to look down at her, she said something very brief that left Keiko stunned, and then she started to walk forwards.

Hiei watched her until the distance between them had halved and he noticed Keiko begrudgingly leaving, at which point he spun around to face the house again, cursing his mind for choosing that moment to go silent. He tried to focus on something – anything – logical to say, but before he came close to finding an answer Botan had reached his side. He glanced at her but she did not look his way, instead keeping her eyes on the house, and so he turned back to look at the house himself: but from the corner of his eye he could still see her standing there, dressed in her neat pink kimono and white obi, her powder blue hair swept up into a high ponytail as usual, and her hands held together in front of her chest, obscured beneath her excessively long sleeves.

She turned her head to look fully at him. He kept his head forwards, but when he saw her face change slightly he turned to her, feeling slightly angered and disappointed when she immediately turned back to the house. As she turned her head her hair flicked out at her shoulder, releasing that flowery scent again, that same one she had used in the bath in the paradise reality. Hiei drew in a deep breath and held onto it for as long as was comfortable before releasing it again.

"It's um…" she said faintly. "Well it's… I mean it looks like… What is it?"

Hiei glanced at her, seeing that she had moved one hand forwards, the tip of her index finger barely visible, poking out the end of her sleeve at the tree-house. Hiei turned back to the house, opening his mouth to tell her that it was a tree-house – an obvious answer to an obvious question – but what came out of his mouth surprised even him.

"It's… A common denominator."

Well, he told himself, it was, by Shuichi's definition, a common denominator from the paradise reality. A forced one, but one nonetheless, and one that would be used to help bring some of the better things of the paradise reality into the norm reality. Hopefully.

"It's… Very pretty," Botan said.

"Hn," Hiei said.

"It was Kuwabara who designed it, yes?" she asked.

"Hn," he replied.

"You've all been working very hard here."

"Hn."

"I'm surprised."

"…Hn."

"…Especially with you, Hiei…"

"…Hn…"

Botan sighed.

"I know you've always been the strong, silent type, but don't you have anything more to say for yourself that to grunt monosyllabically at me?"

She turned to look at him, and even from the corner of his eye he could see that spirited passion twinkling in her pink eyes. There was an abundance of things he wanted to say to her, and not a single word of it was monosyllabic: but in that moment, caught off-guard and feeling slightly numb, words failed him.

"I see," she said, turning back to the house. "Well, anyway, you should know that the SDF won't stay away from here for long, so whatever it is that you're trying to do here, you should do it quickly and then… Do whatever else you intend to do next…"

"Go back to demon world?" Hiei offered, keeping his eyes on the tree-house.

"…Right…" she said quietly. "If-if that's what you intend to do next then you should do it."

"I will."

"Alright then."

Hiei glanced at her, finding her jaw squared and her features tense as though she was holding something back: though what it was he could only guess at.

"I'm going to um…" she said, pointing at the house. "Just… Have a look at the…"

She briefly glanced at Hiei, and for a moment their eyes met: but it was only a fleeting moment, as she turned and started towards the house. Hiei watched her start to climb the rope ladder, a smirk appearing on his face unbidden as he recalled climbing the ladder behind her and looking up her dress in paradise. Acting on instinct he followed her, starting up the ladder before she was even halfway up it: but to his frustration, her ankle-length, double-wrapped kimono showed little more than her tabi socks, pulled up as far as they would go. Once or twice he thought he might have caught sight of a small amount of skin just above the top of a sock by the middle of her calves, but even just the thought of getting excited over something so pathetic made him push the thought from his mind.

Botan opened the front door of the house and paused there until Hiei joined her on the walkway.

"No floor yet?" she asked, looking down at the criss-cross struts of wood that formed the base of the house but had yet to have actual floorboards secured to them.

"Just walk on the beams," he told her.

Her face flickered and her cheeks flushed slightly as though she was embarrassed by something, but she took his advice regardless, stepping inside and walking along the beams of wood. Hiei followed her at a reasonable distance, falling further and further behind her as he noticed that she appeared to be looking for something. The inside of the house was at that point, as Kuwabara had pointed out only minutes earlier, still quite bare, with only the supporting walls in place and frames marking where additional partition walls were to go. It was not clear what any of the rooms were yet, though their sizes were reasonably visible, and it was that aspect that Botan seemed to be focusing on.

"What's this?" she eventually asked, stopping by a hollow window-frame and looking about the room she was in.

"A bedroom?" Hiei replied.

He was not really sure himself. Based on its location in relation to the front and back doors, it seemed to be one of the spare rooms near where Monzan had slept in the paradise reality.

"A bedroom?" Botan asked, meeting his eyes suddenly and with a surprising amount of confidence.

"…Yes…" he said slowly, almost wanting to look away as he found her practically staring at him, her eyes almost luminous in the darkness of the unlit house.

"So was this our bedroom, or was this Monzan's bedroom?" she asked, folding her arms and lifting her chin up slightly in a defiant look.

Hiei faltered but managed to mostly keep it from showing in his face.

"I mean, this is the house we lived in after we got married, right?" she added when he did not answer her. "You know, when I became your wife and we had that son who looked just like you that we called Monzan, which you didn't tell me about and maybe if you had I might have believed you a lot sooner all those times you came to spirit world talking about us being married…"

Hiei narrowed his eyes slightly and Botan let out a short, sharp sigh.

"Why didn't you tell me his name was Monzan?" she asked.

"I didn't think it was significant," he replied.

"Don't say that," she said, shaking her head. "Because you said, in front of Koenma, that he was not allowed to have a son with me and name him Monzan because that was the name of your son, so don't tell me you didn't think it was significant."

"…Okay… Then no. This wasn't our bedroom. Or Monzan's. I think this was the bedroom for the second baby."

Botan's eyes almost popped out of her head and she stumbled slightly, grabbing her hands out behind her at the window-frame, her chest heaving in panic as she finally found her footing again.

"S-second baby?" she asked.

"It's not important," he replied, looking away from her as she had broken their staring contest to check her feet were placed safely on the beams.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

"It's irrelevant. You don't understand how different everything was in that… life."

"But… You wanted to go back there. And you did go back there. And you liked it there. Does that mean that… That you actually liked being married to me and having children with me?"

Hiei met her eyes again and for a long time they simply looked at each other in silence.

"You should have told me the truth," Botan eventually said.

"You cried, and screamed and begged Koenma to keep me away from you when I arrived in spirit world after I got back from that other reality," Hiei pointed out. "I went to spirit world to try to get you to come away with me, and you ran into the arms of Koenma and sat by and watched while his band of fools ganged up on me and beat me down. You told me to stop every time I told you that you were my wife, so why would I have bothered telling you any more about our life in that other reality?"

She nodded.

"Fine," she said, walking across the beams again, stepping through the frame of a wall and moving towards the front door again.

Hiei watched her go, waiting for her to say something else or turn around, and when she did neither, he slowly followed after her. She stopped at the walkway, peering down the rope ladder for a long time before turning around to face Hiei, the expression on her face indescribable and frankly confusing to him.

"You should have told me," she insisted. "I had a right to know the truth."

He shook his head, all the time thinking that the truth – the real truth, the only truth that actually mattered as far as either of them were concerned – was that she was a ferry girl who hated him and he was a demon who had let her die and was about to face a similar fate himself. She shook her head slightly and took a step backwards. Her foot stopped at the very edge of the open part of the walkway leading down the rope ladder, and Hiei expected her to then summon her oar and fly off back to spirit world.

But instead she took another step back and fell screaming towards the ground.

Hiei dove out through a nearby window, barely making it to the ground in time to catch Botan before she landed head and shoulder first on the forest floor. She took a moment to regain her senses, seemingly completely overcome with her own shock – though Hiei could hardly blame her for that, as he himself was tense and his mind was screaming after what had almost happened. When she did eventually start to calm down, her eyes blinking and focusing once more, she flinched and twitched and then glared at Hiei.

"Please let me go," she said quietly.

He obligingly set her on her feet, but his hands found their way to her arms, and he could not make himself release her entirely.

"I was fine," she said, avoiding his eyes.

"Why didn't you summon your oar, you idiot?" he asked her.

She shook her head, a strange look passing over her face before she met his eyes again.

"I said let me go," she said firmly.

Hiei slowly took his hands from Botan's arms and stepped back. As soon as his hands were clear of her body she turned and ran off, which seemed even more ridiculous than her falling from the tree-house. Halfway across the lawn she tripped and fell face down, hurriedly scrambling up again and looking over her shoulder almost fearfully at Hiei before running on again. Hiei watched her go until she had disappeared down the steps, his last glimpse of her being a flick of the tip of her ponytail.

"…Strange…" he muttered to himself.

"It was rather, yes."

"Oh, fuck!"

Hiei clutched a hand to his chest and scowled angrily at the red-haired human suddenly at his side.

"I hope she doesn't tell Koenma that you're here," Shucihi said, turning to Hiei. "Then he'll send the SDF after you again."

Hiei sighed.

"Nah, she wouldn't do that."

"Fuck!"

Hiei turned to his other side, seeing Kuwabara standing there, looking over his head at Shuichi.

"Botan's our friend, you don't have to worry about her ratting us out," he said.

"I thought you two bastards left already?" Hiei snarled, glancing back and forth between the two humans.

"I came back because I wanted to make sure that you didn't say something stupid," Shuichi said.

"I just came back to eavesdrop," Kuwabara confessed.

Hiei growled, ripping his sword from its sheath.

"Shut-up and get back to work!" he yelled. "Both of you!"

* * *

Over the next few days, Hiei lost a little of the hope he had been clinging onto after the first week of work on the tree-house being so productive. Various things started to go wrong, and he began to think that it was a sure sign that there was no fixing the norm reality, that it was a dystopia, and that the guardian of fate had been right all along: some things were just meant to be. The problems started when one of the windows of the tree-house got broken before it was even installed, and nobody seemed to know how it had happened, and everyone spent the rest of the day blaming everyone else. The situation worsened the day after that when Kuwabara and Keiko had a fight about something nobody else understood, but both seemed quite incensed about, and they had yet to fully forgive each other for it. All the arguing slowed down the pace of work, and when, the day after Kuwabara and Keiko's heated argument, Shuichi calmly and bluntly announced that it looked like it would be impossible to finish the house before the following Monday, everyone lost at least a little of their motivation and everyone lost a lot of patience with Shuichi – except for Maya, who defended him vehemently, causing yet more arguing.

Suffering bickering humans all day and sleeping in Kuwabara's apartment with him and his cat at night was torturous, but it was nothing compared to the nagging sensation that had been eating away at Hiei's nerves since his meeting with Botan.

Something seemed amiss, but, just like when he had spotted things he thought were amiss in other realities, it remained a mystery that he doubted death-threats or demands could solve, and he lacked the ability to approach the situation by any other means, so a mystery it remained.

Hiei hated mysteries.

On the Thursday night of that week, Hiei chose to spend the night in the tree-house. The floorboards had been laid and the walls were mostly boarded over, so he armed himself with a flask of coffee, the remaining wall panels and some tools and prepared to stay awake all night finishing the walls to try to help the project along a little. First he drank half of the flask and then he moved to the nearest unfinished wall, bending down to pick up a panel only to flinch in shock when he found that, as he lifted one end, the other end lifted with it.

"You!" he blurted out as he caught sight of the person helping him lift the panel.

"I wasn't going to leave you here alone," Shuichi replied. "That would have been very unwise. What if the SDF arrive?"

Hiei gave him a withering look.

"I see," he said sarcastically. "Well, I do feel much safer with you here, since you are obviously quite capable of holding back the entire squad of King Enma's most powerful soldiers."

"I never said that I intended to fight them," Shuichi pointed out. "I would simply distract them while you escaped."

"Distract them?" Hiei echoed. "With what?"

Shuichi shrugged and Hiei sighed.

"Never mind, let's just get on with this," Hiei said.

Together they lifted the panel into place and Hiei raised a tool, looking carefully at the panel in front of them before shifting his eyes to Shuichi, who was slowly shaking his head. Hiei placed down the pointed tool and picked up another one, checking Shuichi to see if he had chosen correctly this time. Again Shuichi shook his head, and with a sigh of annoyance, Hiei picked up a third tool, and finally Shuichi smiled and nodded.

Hiei turned back to the panel, and glanced back and forth between the wood and the tool several times before turning to Shuichi again.

"Would you like me to do that part?" he offered.

Hiei begrudgingly handed the tool to Shuichi and held the panel while he set about fixing it in place. Hiei watched his actions with some degree of interest, and when Shuichi reached his side of the panel he stepped aside with a roll of his eyes.

"It's just hitting," he explained when he caught the slightly sceptical look Shuichi gave him. "I could have done that."

"You can take over if you like," Shuichi offered, holding the tool out towards him.

Hiei took the tool – he thought it might be called a hammer – and began copying what Shuichi had been doing. After a few attempts, Hiei conceded that Shuichi was better suited to continue using the hammer – Hiei was left with a few red marks where he had hit his own hand, a few puncture wounds where he had pushed a nail into his hand instead of the wood and he had broken one of the supporting beams when he had managed to get a clear hit and gone straight through the board.

"Have you seen Botan again since last weekend?" Shuichi asked as he repaired the broken beam with glue and a metal bracket.

"No," Hiei replied, hoping to end the conversation there.

"Me neither," Shuichi said. "Don't you find that odd?"

"No," Hiei said.

"Not at all?"

"No."

"Oh. Well have you given any more thought to your plan to rescue Yukina?"

"No."

"I have. Would you like to hear my ideas?"

"No."

"I reason that we have three potential ways to approach the situation."

"No."

"…I didn't ask a question."

"I know."

Shuichi gave Hiei a questioning look but Hiei ignored it and they worked on in silence for a little longer before Shuichi began talking again.

"You won't have long to finalise your plan," he began slowly. "Once Monday comes around and we manage to convince that man to come and see this house and award the contract to Kuwabara, we'll know exactly when he leaves and that will be our deadline. Obviously we don't want to act too soon, but equally we cannot leave it too late. What complications are we likely to encounter?"

"Noisy humans who can't take a hint?" Hiei suggested flatly.

"Obviously there is the risk that the SDF close the breach in the Kakai Barrier before you return," Shuichi carried on obliviously. "But maybe that won't be a big problem, since Yukina will still be able to pass through the sealed barrier to this realm and to Kuwabara… It would mean that you would be sealed into demon world once more though. Is that what you want?"

Hiei sighed quietly before answering.

"Demon world is my rightful place," he said, his voice slowing and straining slightly over the last two words he spoke.

"You always said that demon world was your true home," Shuichi said with a nod.

Hiei nodded.

"I wonder if you've considered anything that far ahead," Shuichi added, his voice slightly lower. "Or if you are currently just taking each day as it comes."

"I wonder if you enjoy having a head on your shoulders," Hiei answered him. "Or if you are currently just trying to provoke me into removing it for you."

"I was quite serious," Shuichi said defensively.

"As was I," Hiei returned.

"This isn't something you can just rush into blindly, my good friend–"

"I'm not you're good friend."

"–there is much riding against you, many hurdles to overcome. The slightest miscalculation could result in disaster. Surely you don't want that for Yukina?"

Hiei wanted to tell Shuichi that he was treading on thin ice making such remarks: he was basically bribing Hiei with the safety of his own sister, a matter Shuichi knew was close to his heart.

"I don't think you should go to the ice village alone," Shuichi continued, apparently interpreting Hiei's silence as a sign to continue his tirade. "If something happens to you – even just if you get into a fight – your distraction could put Yukina at great risk. You should consider taking someone else with you."

"I'm not taking Kuwabara," Hiei quickly asserted. "When he sees how Yukina has been living, he will make a scene and attract unnecessary attention in our direction."

"Kuwabara has already seen how Yukina has been living," Shuichi said, looking at Hiei as though he was the one who had just said something absurd.

"How is that even possible?" Hiei asked.

Shuichi held up his little finger on one hand.

"What does that mean?" Hiei snapped impatiently. "Is that human code for fuck off?"

"No," Shuichi said calmly.

He waggled his finger slightly and Hiei then remembered where he had seen the gesture before: Shuichi was referring to the claim that Kuwabara made about having a "red thread of fate" tying his little finger to Yukina's, that allowed him to always find her, wherever she was. Hiei hated the sentimentality of it all, but he had to wonder how much truth there was in it: could Kuwabara actually see Yukina and find his way to her? If so, perhaps it would be worth rethinking his plans to recover her from the ice village.

"Besides, I wasn't going to suggest that you take Kuwabara anyway," Shuichi said suddenly. "I do actually agree that he would probably make a scene, not out of shock, because I do believe that he already understands Yukina's circumstances, but he's likely to over-react, either out of joy at being reunited with Yukina or out of anger if anyone tries to stop him."

"At least we agree on something," Hiei muttered through a sigh.

"I think that I should go with you."

Hiei spun around sharply, fixing his eyes onto Shuichi, the perfectly serious look on his face only making his suggestion seem all the more absurd.

"I would tell you why that's a bad idea," Hiei began, trying to convey as much sarcasm in his tone as he possibly could. "But it might be quicker and easier for me to tell you what's good about that idea: nothing."

"Come now Hiei, it's not quite so ridiculous as you might think," Shuichi said, his tone almost patronising, which did little to ease Hiei's mounting anger. "This body has survived demon world's toughest conditions before, I can manage it again. I can move quickly and stealthily, and, unlike you, I have a plan for how we can extract Yukina from the ice village undetected."

"…You don't get to have an opinion on this any more."

"Would you reconsider if I took the fox ears off?"

"No."

"How about if I–"

"No."

"Maybe if I just told you the specifics of–"

"No."

"You're being incredibly stubborn."

"I could say the same about you."

Shuichi lowered his head slightly, and a vaguely devious look passed over his eyes: but the moment was brief and he ultimately resigned to a downtrodden look of defeat that made Hiei finally relax. They continued their work mostly in silence from then on, and although Hiei had won their argument, he could not help feeling that Shuichi was actually right. He was taking things one day at a time. He had not given any serious, detailed thought to how he would recover Yukina from the ice village. He had no contingency plan for dealing with the SDF attacking him, taking Yukina or closing the breach in the barrier that Kuwabara would need to create. He had no contingency plan for dealing with anyone who tried to hinder him as he crossed demon world or in the ice village itself.

And the more he thought about all of those things, the more he realised that he could not even begin to think of any solutions to the problems they posed. None of them were small matters, and, frankly, none of them were things he could tackle alone.

As they finished their work, Hiei watched Shuichi drag the back of one hand along his brow and smile whimsically out of a window at the rising sun.

Maybe he was going to have to take Shuichi with him after all.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei has a spooky moment of déjà vu that leaves him questioning a few things about his own reality, Kuwabara makes a confession to Hiei that leads to him resolving an unexplained event in the paradise reality – though the result is not at all what Hiei had hoped for, and his extreme reaction to the truth leads to a breakdown in the good relations he had been building with the others. **Chapter 40 – The Resources**


	40. The Resources

**Recap:** The gang started work on the tree-house, and, to Hiei's surprise, they were doing a good job. Hiei had a strange encounter with Botan and Shuichi convinced Hiei that he is ill prepared for rescuing Yukina, and Hiei began to consider taking Shuichi with him on that mission.

* * *

 **Chapter 40: The Resources**

Friday became quite an eventful day for Hiei, moving from one extreme to the other over the course of the day. Early in the morning, before she was due to open her shop, Maya came to the tree-house and delivered a hideous old couch she thought they could use to decorate the house. It was the same size and shape as the couch in the tree-house in paradise, but it was covered in a hideous fabric that pained Hiei's eyes to look at. He tried to tell her not to bother leaving it, but Shuichi did not give him the chance to finish, and somehow the ugly piece of furniture found its way up to the tree-house and into the living room, where Shuichi and Kuwabara sat on it while they had breakfast.

"Not sulking are you, Hiei?" Shizuru asked as she passed him.

He scowled at her back as she walked away from his position perched on a windowsill, watching her until Keiko stepped into his line of sight, looking unnaturally cheerful for such an early hour.

"I had an idea," she said.

He contemplated telling her exactly what he thought about humans who "had ideas" and where he thought they ought to shove them, but he decided against it on the grounds that everyone seemed to be in a good mood that day, and they were always more productive when they remained cheerful.

"I was thinking about how to dress the house," she continued.

Hiei could not stop his eyebrows from twisting at her words.

"Dress the house?" he repeated at her.

"Yes," she replied with a nod of her head. "To decorate it."

Hiei narrowed his eyes then.

"You won't need curtains because you have the shutters on the windows," she said.

Hiei softened a little at her words: the tree-house in the paradise reality had not had curtains.

"But I had already found some fabric in my parents' attic that I thought would look nice here, so I made a cover for the couch Maya brought you," she continued. "I just finished it this morning. I wanted to put it on before Maya took the couch here, but I can do it now. What do you think?"

Keiko pulled out a bundle of fabric from a plastic bag and shook it open. Hiei stared at it for several seconds before looking over at the couch and then turning back to the fabric and finally looking at Keiko.

"Do you like it?" she asked.

"It's exactly the same," he replied quietly.

"No…" she said, looking over at the couch. "No it's not. The material on the couch right now has strange flowers and birds on it, there's no pattern on this material and it's a different colour."

Hiei ignored her ramblings, his mind still reeling at the unbelievable coincidence: Maya's couch was the same size and shape as the couch that had been in the tree-house in the paradise reality, and the material covering Keiko was holding up was the same colour and texture as the couch from the paradise reality.

"How did you know that?" Hiei asked her suspiciously.

"H-How did I know what?" she asked nervously.

She avoided looking him directly in the eye, and as her face began to turn red, he became all the more certain that something strange was going on without his knowledge.

"How did you know that was the correct fabric to put on the couch?" Hiei demanded. "Who told you?"

"It was just something I found in my parents' attic!" Keiko answered defensively. "I just chose this particular one because it looked the nicest!"

"You had a choice of fabrics and you chose that one? Why?"

"You don't like it?"

"Answer me."

"I was trying to do something nice for you!"

"How do you know what this house looks like in another reality?"

"I don't, but it was a pretty easy assumption to make that this would be the right colour scheme to decorate with, because you don't seem to care how this place gets decorated, which means you obviously didn't care in that other reality, and obviously it was all left up to Botan to decide!"

Kuwabara made a small squeaking noise in the back of his throat at Keiko's last remark, but as Hiei turned his way he abruptly stood from the couch and pretended to be stretching and then checking the measurements of the kitchen doorway.

"What are you saying?" Hiei asked, turning back to Keiko.

"I'm saying that Botan chose this," Keiko replied, meeting his eyes for the first time since he had questioned her decision, her eyes suddenly confident and determined. "She wanted to come here and help us but she's busy with her work and she was upset the last time she spoke to you, so I told her that she should stay away."

"We have plenty of work to be done here," Shuichi said. "An extra pair of hands would always be welcome. And Botan might be able to help us by updating us on the SDF and if they are suspicious at all of the–"

"You don't get to have an opinion on this," Hiei cut him off.

"I just thought it might be awkward if she came here," Keiko said.

Hiei nodded.

"It might be dangerous, too," he said. "If that brat Koenma found out that she knew about my presence here and had not reported it, she would be in great danger."

"That's exactly what I thought," Keiko said.

She forced a smile and moved off towards the couch, asking Shuichi to help her attach the cover she had made for it, leaving Hiei to contemplate everything she had just said. It was perhaps not so coincidental that the house now contained the same couch as it did in the paradise reality if Botan had helped choose it, but he was slightly confused about one aspect of what had been said.

He had not realised that Botan had such regular and frequent contact with Keiko.

* * *

After seeing the couch of paradise appearing in the tree-house, Hiei started to see other, little things he had almost forgotten about from paradise gradually take place around about him, from fixtures to furnishings. He was not really sure why everything was turning out exactly the same – especially as it was happening about eight years later than it had in the paradise reality – but he was pleased that it was, because it was almost like having a little bit of paradise back in his life. Which was as close as he was ever going to get to seeing paradise again, he thought miserably.

At the end of another long day of work, everyone began gradually leaving for their respective homes, with Keiko being the first to go as it was Friday night and the restaurant would be busier than it had been during the week, so she was needed at work. Eventually everyone had gone apart from Hiei and Kuwabara – to Hiei's surprise, Shuichi had left with Maya to talk about plants.

"I can't believe we did all this work in such a short space of time," Kuwabara commented as they stood by the edge of the forest looking in at the tree-house. "I bet it took us way longer to build this house in that weird other reality you visited than it did here and now."

With the light levels dropping rapidly and the lanterns absent from the house, it was quickly being swallowed up into darkness, but it was still reasonably visible from their vantage point.

"Guess we couldn't have done it without our "director of operations"," Kuwabara added, smiling at Hiei.

"I would have killed any of you for slacking off," Hiei flatly replied.

"We know you wouldn't have really," Kuwabara said. "You're just a lippy little bastard."

Hiei turned to glare at him but Kuwabara merely shrugged.

"You never threaten to kill someone twice," he said. "Either you threaten once and then just do it, or you threaten a hundred times and never lift a finger. Shuichi told me it's sort of like your way of saying you like us."

"Shuichi is mentally imbalanced," Hiei pointed out.

"He's not entirely sane, I suppose, but he's been really helpful, and he sure is smart!" Kuwabara said.

"I suppose he's had his uses," Hiei conceded.

"Yeah. We all have. I think we've all enjoyed having something to work towards. This weekend will be pretty hectic, but it looks like we've made it."

A short silence passed between them, and a slight wind played through the trees, the sound slightly different than it usually was in that area due to the clearing that had been created. Hiei felt a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he realised that the sound of the wind in the trees was now the same as it had been in paradise. He felt soothed by it, and he allowed himself to relax.

But the moment was short-lived.

"Uh, Hiei?" Kuwabara said. "Look, I uh… There's something I've been meaning to tell you. I guess I just never really got the right moment to uh… And I sorta promised the others that I wouldn't say anything to you…"

Hiei smirked in amusement.

"Hn, idiot," he said. "I already know what's troubling you."

"You-you do?" Kuwabara asked.

"Of course I do," Hiei said. "You've been fawning over my sister shamelessly and very publicly for years, and now that you know about her relation to me, you're concerned that I might kill you for–"

"Uh no, Hiei, it's not that."

Hiei turned to Kuwabara, the look on his face suddenly making Hiei realise the severity of the situation.

"What is it?" he demanded. "Tell me now!"

"I promised Keiko I wouldn't say anything," Kuwabara began.

"Fuck Keiko, tell me what it is!" Hiei snapped.

"You're not gonna like it," Kuwabara muttered awkwardly.

"Tell me!"

"…You're really not gonna like it."

"Just tell me!"

"The thing is, it's not Keiko's fault, so don't be mad at her. She was only… Botan made her promise not to say anything, and then Keiko made all of us promise not to say anything either. We didn't tell Shuichi because we thought he would probably just tell you – because he isn't really good at keeping secrets – and I never intended to tell you, but I think you maybe have a right to know, since you're doing all of this because you–"

Hiei drew out his sword and gave Kuwabara a warning glare.

"It's about Botan," Kuwabara said, his eyes on Hiei's sword, but his face looking more sorrowful than fearful. "She's not a ferry girl any more. She's a human. She's on some sort of trial from King Enma. She has to live as a human for ten years and then she can become a spirit. She's living in this world, and she's using a fake name… Natsuko… She's living with Keiko, and that's the real reason Keiko didn't want you staying at her place, Botan didn't want you to find out that she was a human now."

Hiei slowly replaced his sword to its sheath.

"That's why she didn't summon her oar…" he muttered. "She doesn't have it any more… She just dressed up that way to fool me… And that's why you kept calling her Natsuko when you saw that picture of her, she introduced herself to you as Natsuko, and you didn't know any better until I restored your memories…"

"Hiei, part of the reason I'm telling you this is because of what Botan does now," Kuwabara said slowly. "She says she doesn't mind doing it, but I don't really like it, I think she deserves better… Y'know, since Keiko's parents' restaurant became less popular, it sometimes gets some pretty mean and dirty customers…"

Hiei felt something inside of him snap into place, like a missing piece of a puzzle finally found and returned to its rightful place.

"Oh fuck no!" he yelled.

"Hiei, wait!" Kuwabara cried.

Kuwabara may have said more on the matter, but by the time he had finished just those two words, Hiei was already on his way down the temple steps. As he ran he hoped that he was wrong in the assumption he had made, but at the same time he already knew that he was right: this was, after all, the dystopia of his life. Clearly Botan had decided to become Koenma's wife after all and that was why she was living as a human and clearly she was living very poorly – even more so than she had in that near miss reality.

Hiei reached Yukimura Restaurant in a matter of minutes, pushing his way through the entrance door and pushing aside one of the few customers in the restaurant as he marched towards the double doors leading into the area behind the restaurant. He heard Keiko screaming out his name from somewhere behind him but he ignored it, shouldering his way through the doors and only stopping when he reached the corridor beyond them, a strange sense of déjà vu passing over him – something he had learned was always a bad sign when he felt it in his own reality. He made to walk the length of the corridor but stopped again as he saw a familiar door at his side, and a sense of nausea deep in his stomach told him that his worst fears had just been realised.

Hiei kicked open the door marked as the men's toilets and he was completely unsurprised to see Botan standing by the sinks, staring at him in the mirror with wide, almost fearful eyes. He looked back at the door, which was hanging open, as he had damaged its hinges with the force of his kick, and he saw a temporary sign stuck there. He pulled it down, reading it several times to be sure that he had understood it correctly, before once more looking over at Botan, who had started to become flustered.

"Wh-what are you doing here?" she asked.

Hiei held up the sign and she looked at it in the mirror, the redness that had been colouring her cheeks fading rapidly until she looked unnaturally pale, as though she might pass out. She moved her eyes to the reflection of Hiei's face, looking almost apologetic.

"I know what you must think of me," she said quietly.

Hiei shook his head and threw down the sign, taking one last look at the words "no entry – cleaning in progress" before walking from the toilets and drawing out his sword. He smacked aside the doors leading back into the restaurant, finding Keiko arguing with a breathless Kuwabara. He did not bother waiting for them to attempt any explanations or excuses, instead swinging his sword at Keiko.

"Hiei!" Kuwabara cried, barely managing to bring up a chair to catch Hiei's attack. "What the hell are you doing?"

The few customers that were actually dining in the restaurant began panicking, some leaving, some hiding under tables and others making phone calls: a small part of Hiei warned him that drawing too much attention to his presence there was a bad thing, but he was too incensed to care.

"What am I doing?" he roared, the volume of his voice making Keiko flinch and recoil further behind Kuwabara. "What are you bastards doing treating my wife like a damn slave?"

"Hiei, you don't understand!" Keiko wailed. "Botan works here!"

"You're forcing my wife to clean your fucking toilets!" Hiei shouted.

"That's her job, Hiei!" Kuwabara said. "She needed a place to stay and a job here in the living world, so she came to live here with Keiko, and she works here to pay for her rent!"

"My wife is cleaning up human excrement from a public shit-hole," Hiei growled.

"It's not like that!" Keiko cried.

"You did this to her!"

Hiei pulled his sword free of the chair Kuwabara was still holding and moved to swing it at Keiko again, only stopping at the sound of a familiar voice begging for him to cease his attack. He turned towards the source of the sound, seeing Botan standing by the doors at the back of the restaurant.

"We don't need this," Kuwabara said to Hiei. "Go back there and talk to Botan, me and Keiko'll deal with things out here."

Hiei looked around at the chaos of panicked people around him, and the sound of sirens drawing closer reminded him that he was mere moments away from blowing his cover in the living world and ruining all the hard work he and the others had done over the last two weeks.

"This isn't over," he warned Keiko as he stowed his sword in its scabbard.

He then crossed the room towards Botan, who ushered him through the doors to the corridor behind the restaurant again.

"This way," she said, continuing along the corridor towards a set of stairs.

Hiei followed after her obediently, all the while watching her back and studying the clothing she was in: no matter what Keiko or Kuwabara had tried to say, there was no escaping the fact that Botan was dressed like a menial worker, and Hiei did not like it one bit.

Not to mention the fact that Koenma, her future husband, apparently thought that it was alright to force her to live that way when clearly she deserved so much better.

Even that other Hiei had treated Botan better than that: he had made Kuwabara build the tree-house for her and insisted that she did not work in such a job.

"I didn't want you to find out that I was here," she said as they ascended the stairs together. "I'm a little annoyed that you have found out now."

Hiei said nothing, mostly because he could not trust himself not to yell and break something, and he knew that neither of those things would help him or Botan now.

"Kuwabara is right," she continued. "I needed a place to stay when I became human, and Keiko has always been a good friend to me, so I came to stay here. The only way I could pay the rent was to get a job, but I'm not qualified to do anything in this world, so Keiko's father said he would let me live here for free if I took over the cleaning duties."

The word "slave" ran rampant around Hiei's mind, but he stopped it from escaping through his lips.

"I can't say that it's the best job in this world, but I don't mind working hard," Botan said. "Sometimes, I admit, it can be quite tough… Like when someone throws up over the counter or misses the toilet with their… Well, you get the picture. And sometimes the clientele here aren't exactly the most courteous, either."

Botan entered a room near the top of the staircase and Hiei followed closely after her. He was focusing his entire energy on remaining calm, but as Botan closed the door behind him, closing them into the room together, he found it a little easier as the entire room smelled of that flowery stuff she used in the bath, and inhaling it deeply gave him a sense of peace. It was, he thought, a false sense of peace, because he only felt that way because he was associating the smell with paradise – and he was clearly a long way from paradise.

"This seems familiar…" Botan muttered.

Hiei met her eyes, wondering if she had felt the déjà vu of the moment in the toilets again; but the ironic smile on her face told him that she was just making some sort of joke.

"You and me…" she said slowly. "In my bedroom under unusual circumstances?"

Hiei assumed that she was referring to the time he had awoken in her room in spirit world after his disastrous experience of travelling through multiple realities without control. Botan seemed nervous and as though she thought that she was guilty of something, though Hiei could only guess what. He took a moment to look about himself, finding that the room was plain, small and simplistic, and that it reflected the fact that Botan was new to life in the living world as she had few possessions of any significance – except for one.

"What's that?" Hiei asked, pointing and staring shamelessly at the distinctly ornate object on a shelf above her bed.

"Oh, that's nothing," Botan replied, waving a hand in the air dismissively.

Hiei ignored her flippant response and took a step closer, blinking a few times to be sure that he was not imagining what he was looking at.

"It's just…" Botan began. "Well… We had to sell all of the valuable things in Master Genkai's temple, and it was so awful, but I managed to convince Keiko and Shizuru not to sell those. I've always felt this strange attachment to them. It's silly, I know. I can't even explain it."

Hiei was tempted to tell her that, even if she could not explain her attachment, he certainly could: apparently he was not the only one who experienced moments of déjà vu or saw things of significance across realities.

"Maybe I just think that they were the prettiest of the collection," Botan suggested. "But sometimes I feel like they have a story to tell."

Hiei almost wanted to laugh at the irony of her words. He wondered what sort of force was at work to have caused her to choose for a keepsake – from the many items of value in the old lady's temple – the set of swords that Hiei had assigned to Monzan in the paradise reality.

"You think I'm silly," Botan said. "Well maybe I am, but drawing attention to yourself like you just did when you are meant to be undercover is silly too."

Hiei shook his head.

"It's not silly," he said. "It's fate – I think."

"…Picking a fight with Keiko and alerting a restaurant full of people to your presence here is your idea of fate?"

"No, the…"

Hiei waved a hand at the swords, but as he considered the situation he realised how pointless it was to even attempt to explain himself and so he did not bother trying to.

"You really should be more careful, you know," Botan said. "Drawing attention to yourself like that. Lord Koenma is still angry from the last time he found you somewhere that you weren't meant to be."

"Hn, it's not his concern what I do or where I do it," Hiei replied.

"It is when you cause trouble in the human world," Botan pointed out.

Hiei turned to face her fully, smirking despite feeling quite bitter on the inside.

"Why haven't you reported me yet if that's really how you feel?" he asked.

"Because I can see the good that you are doing here," she replied. "Or at least, the good that you were doing here before you started swinging your sword about and threatening poor Keiko."

"She lied to me."

"How so?"

"She told me that she was in contact with you through your work, she let me believe that you were still a ferry girl in spirit world."

"But Keiko is in contact with me through my work since I work here now. You misunderstood her and led yourself to believe otherwise. You can't blame Keiko for that."

"Why are you here anyway? I thought you said that you changed your mind about leaving your ferry girl duties?"

"Yes, at first, when Lord Koenma told me that he did not intend to have a family with me I did think that I wanted to back out of going through with the trial to become a spirit. But by then, I had already agreed everything with King Enma and I was still eager to make a change in my life, so I decided that I be as well stick my oar in the water and give it a try, because I have nothing to lose and rather a lot to gain."

"No!"

Hiei made to punch the wall but stopped himself at the last possible moment when he heard Botan begging him not to do it.

"I don't understand why you're so upset," she said.

"You decided to just "stick my oar in the water and give it a try, because you had nothing to lose and rather a lot to gain"?"

"Yes, that's right."

"That's what you were supposed to say about me!"

Hiei slapped a hand over his eyes – of all the ironic things he had encountered in his own reality, this had to be, by far, the most absurd – he was almost certain that this moment was the result of that witch of fate conspiring with that bratty prince to create something they found amusing: after all, those words Botan had just spoken to him about her decision to take a chance on being with Koenma were the same words she had spoken to Koenma in the paradise reality about her decision to take a chance on being with Hiei.

"This won't make you happy," he said bitterly.

"I don't know that until I give it a try," she replied.

Hiei took a few deep breaths to try to keep himself calm, but his plan mostly failed as he forgot to exhale after each and every intake of air.

"Are you happy?" he asked her.

"Right now?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "Here and now, in this life, are you happy?"

"No," she replied honestly. "Are you happy?"

"No," he said.

She nodded and Hiei thought that she might then get angry and vehemently start reminding him why her precious Lord Koenma was so wonderful and why she loved him so much. But instead she simply sighed, her eyes watering slightly as though she might cry.

"Now I have a question for you Hiei," she said quietly. "In that other reality you visited, why did I marry you?"

"Because Koenma didn't want you," Hiei spat back bitterly.

Botan nodded, her eyes watering more and she barely managed to sniff back a tear.

"Well that answers my question," she said.

"No it doesn't," Hiei corrected her. "That's not the real reason you married me."

"I know it's not," she said through tightly clenched teeth. "I'm not the sort of person who would marry someone over something so petty. I meant that your childish reply told me all that I needed to know: even if I did marry you in another reality, I still don't like you in this reality!"

"What?"

"You heard me!"

"I wasn't aware that I was being tested! I thought you were just asking a question!"

"I was! And you couldn't even answer it! Do you even know the answer?"

"Of course I do! You married me because you love me!"

"First of all, I don't love you, an alternate version of me loves an alternate version of you. Second of all, do you know why that version of me loves that version of you?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

"Because he's a lucky bastard who got all the luck!"

Botan sighed, and although she no longer looked so sad, a single tear ran down her face.

"You just don't get it," she said.

"Apparently not, no," he replied irritably.

"You should go," she said. "It's probably safe to sneak out the back way by now."

"Are you telling me it's okay to go or are you just telling me to go?"

"Both."

"Hn, fine."

Hiei yanked open the door and marched out of the room, gladly taking himself away from Botan and back out of the Yukimura family home. At the foot of the stairs he met Kuwabara starting up towards him.

"We should probably go out the back way," he suggested.

Hiei nodded and together they navigated their way to the back of the building.

"So, uh," Kuwabara began, scratching at the back of his head nervously as he spoke. "How did it go with Botan?"

Hiei paused to glare at him until he started to sweat.

"You're an idiot," he told him, before walking on.

"Maybe you are too," Kuwabara muttered.

Hiei glared back over his shoulder at Kuwabara, who grinned nervously. They walked on again in silence, and continued that way throughout the journey across the city until they reached the door to Kuwabara's apartment. Hiei watched Kuwabara unlock and open the door before speaking.

"And by the way," he said, stepping inside ahead of Kuwabara (but not before noticing the fearful, nervous look on his face). "Thank you for telling me the truth about Botan."

"Huh?"

Kuwabara walked in behind Hiei and closed the door, remaining by it for some time simply watching Hiei curiously.

"You… You're welcome," he eventually said.

* * *

The next two days passed quickly and quietly as everyone gathered around to finish working on the tree-house. The end result was not quite the same as the paradise version had been – though that was mostly only because it had been impossible to connect power to the house due to the lack of supply at the temple, and so some of the key features were missing like the fridge and the television, but Hiei had insisted that the lanterns be installed, even though they would not be functional, as they had been a common aesthetic feature between the tree-house and the lodge in the paradise reality, and Hiei thought that their presence might be important in helping Kuwabara secure the contract.

On the Sunday night, Shizuru confirmed that she had formulated a plan – along with Keiko and Maya – to lure the necessary people up to see the tree-house, and Kuwabara had been working on making a speech on the house. After confirming their plans to secure the contract the girls went home for the night, leaving Hiei with Kuwabara and Shuichi.

"We probably won't have long after tomorrow until I leave," Kuwabara said as they went out onto the walkway to watch the sun set. "If this works, if I get this contract, I'll probably have to leave within a week."

"Right," Shuichi said. "Which is why you have to adopt our plan for rescuing Yukina, Hiei."

"What?" Hiei echoed, rounding on him.

"Weren't we supposed to approach this more tactfully?" Kuwabara muttered to Shuichi.

"You two have been conspiring behind my back?" Hiei asked.

"In a way, yes," Shuichi replied.

Kuwabara made a squeaking noise and shook his head rapidly at Shuichi, who simply smiled serenely back at him.

"And we've come up with a much better plan than yours," he continued.

Both Hiei and Kuwabara glared at Shuichi in disbelief.

"Your plan, you must admit, was not exactly well thought out," Shuichi said to Hiei.

"And you think that you have a better way to approach this than I do?" Hiei asked him.

"Much better," Shuichi confidently replied. "We have given our plan the due consideration that it merits, so it is, naturally, far superior to your half-assed idea."

"Naturally…" Hiei muttered.

"Um, look, we didn't mean any offence by it," Kuwabara interjected. "We were just talking about it and we had some ideas that we thought maybe you hadn't thought about yet."

"As the only demon in this conversation, as the only one at all familiar with demon world and as the only one who actually knows where the ice village is and what its like there, I think that I am far more likely to know what considerations need to be made in this operation!" Hiei sneered sarcastically.

"And as the only one completely impetuous, headstrong and prone to making bad decisions in the heat of the moment, you are in fact the least likely to know what considerations need to be made for this operation to be a success," Shuichi said.

"I will kill you," Hiei told him flatly.

"We thought that a distraction was necessary – a diversion, if you will – while you recover Yukina," Shuichi continued obliviously. "And, as I can recall from Kurama's memories on the subject, the ice maidens do allow for contact with traders and merchants from outwith the confines of their own village, so our plan was that I should disguise myself as a merchant and create a suitable distraction whilst you and Kuwabara sneak into the village from an alternate approach and rescue Yukina."

Hiei paused before arguing with Shuichi – mostly because, rather surprisingly, he was right about the ice maidens allowing traders and merchants to approach their village and do business with the elders, and distracting the elders was a smart plan, as they were the only ones likely to pose a threat to Hiei if they all banded together to fight him off.

"Nice plan," he eventually recovered. "With only two major drawbacks. First of all, traders or merchants who are brave enough to approach the ice village never do so alone: they always do so in groups of two or more. Secondly, any traders or merchants who approach the ice village are always female, because the ice maidens kill men on sight."

"We already thought about that last part," Kuwabara said. "That's why Shuichi is gonna dress up as the merchant – with his delicate features, we're hoping that the ice maidens think he's a girl."

"Oh well, that fixes that problem then, doesn't it?" Hiei sneered. "And I'm sure they'll overlook his Adam's apple, his big knuckled hands and the bulge in his pants…"

Kuwabara recoiled from Hiei slightly upon his last remark, but Shuichi remained unfazed, simply smiling and waving a hand in the air dismissively.

"It's not a problem, my good friend," he said. "As the conditions in the village are very cold, I would be dressed in many concealing layers of clothing."

"And what about your voice?" Hiei asked.

"Well, he's got a really soft voice," Kuwabara said quietly. "Sometimes he sorta sounds more feminine than my sister, because she smokes and that makes your voice rougher, so maybe we could just pretend that Shuichi is a woman who smokes, and that's why his voice is a bit… Deeper than a girl's usually is."

"Excellent idea," Hiei drawled. "We'll just send him up there with a big fat cigar lodged between his teeth and who would ever know the difference?"

"What was your plan for getting past the elders of the ice village, Hiei?" Shuichi asked.

"I didn't have one," Hiei replied. "But even that was more sensible than what you're proposing to do!"

"I think Shuichi's right, Hiei," Kuwabara said.

Hiei rounded on him, but, although he looked anxious, he did not falter under the intensity of Hiei's glare.

"We need to think about Yukina," he said.

Hiei could not argue with that logic, but he also could not bring himself to agree to such a ridiculous plan.

"It won't work," he said. "They'll see right through your disguise and kill you instantly. I can't be worrying about rescuing you when the whole point of my going to the ice village is to rescue Yukina."

"You needn't worry about me, Hiei," Shuichi assured him. "I can look after myself. Our concern now is the SDF. We have no plan for dealing with them and they will undoubtedly come after us as soon as we break open the Kakai Barrier."

Hiei turned away from Kuwabara and Shuichi long enough to consider his options carefully. It was more beneficial to him to have a distraction for the elders when he arrived at the ice village, and it would be better if Kuwabara was with him when he went for Yukina, as between them they could better protect her on the return journey – if they encountered trouble, Hiei could fight it off whilst Kuwabara ran on to safety with Yukina.

"Entering demon world," he began, turning back to face the others. "And the ice village are very dangerous things for a human to do. Even if you were to survive the journey there and back – and it's unlikely that both of you will – if the SDF find out what you have done, you will face severe repercussions."

"We already know that," Kuwabara instantly replied. "We still want to do this anyway."

"We're all a part of this tangled web together," Shuichi agreed. "And we're prepared to face the consequences of failure."

Hiei nodded.

"We'll worry about how to handle the SDF if they show," Kuwabara said.

Hiei felt far less confident than Kuwabara and Shuichi both looked, but he said no more on the matter – after all, he did need their help, whether he liked that or not – and he tried to focus on Yukina and the importance of getting her out of the ice village.

But he could not escape the idea that the whole plan was going to go horribly wrong somehow.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Things seem to be going well for the gang when Kuwabara manages to win the contract to build the house, but the award comes with a slight stipulation that puts major pressure on their plans to rescue Yukina. But luck seems to be on Hiei's side when he makes another unexpected (and very helpful) ally, and the gang formulate what seems to be a flawless plan and set off to enact it. **Chapter 41 – Stand By Me**

 **Advanced major angst warning for the next chapter**


	41. Stand By Me

**Angst warning  
Cliff-hanger warning  
Lo-ong chapter warning**

 **Recap:** Kuwabara told Hiei that Botan is now living as a human, and when he confronted her, Hiei learned that Botan has been living with Keiko for some time as a human, working as a cleaner at Yukimura Restaurant. Hiei's encounter with Botan did not exactly go well, and afterwards Kuwabara and Shuichi convinced him that he should take them both with him when he goes for Yukina.

* * *

 **Chapter 41: Stand By Me**

Shuichi sat smiling smugly, seemingly blissfully ignorant to the tension around him. He was sitting between Hiei and Keiko, who had been awkward with each other since Hiei had threatened to kill Keiko after learning about Botan's fate. The three of them were hidden amongst the ruins of the old lady's temple, watching Kuwabara as he showed a certain celebrity around the tree-house and Shizuru put herself to good use preoccupying the bodyguard and driver who had accompanied the celebrity to the house. Hiei knew that he ought to be paying more attention to what Kuwabara was actually doing and getting himself ready to interfere with a little violent hypnosis if need be – Kuwabara had insisted that he win the contract on his own merit just as he had done in the paradise reality, hence why Hiei had not already adopted his preferred technique for success – but for some strange and wholly inexplicable reason, Hiei's attention kept wandering to Shuichi, and marvelling at the infinity of his idiocy.

And the moment only ended when Kuwabara and Shizuru waved off their visitors and joined Hiei, Shuichi and Keiko inside the temple.

"It worked!" Kuwabara said.

Keiko leapt up and began hugging Shizuru and Shuichi stood up to pat Kuwabara on the shoulder.

"I don't believe it, it's just all happening so fast!" Kuwabara said.

Shuichi's face changed and he snatched the papers Kuwabara had been clutching onto from his hands, hurriedly scanning over them before fixing Hiei – who was still watching him despite the latest developments – with a worried look.

"That was so amazing!" Keiko said, turning to Kuwabara and touching her hands to her face in awe.

"Yeah, I can't believe the big goofball actually pulled it off," Shizuru said.

"Hey!" Kuwabara protested.

"I'm only kidding, calm down," she said, rolling her eyes. "Of course I'm proud of you, little bro!"

"It all happened so fast!" Kuwabara said, turning to Hiei. "Just like it was meant to be, or something…"

Hiei was vaguely amused by the irony of Kuwabara's words, but his attention was still on Shuichi, who was now looking uncharacteristically anxious and stern, making him look a little more like Kurama: and Hiei had already learned that such moments were never a good sign.

"Um, rather unfortunate just how fast this is happening, perhaps…" he muttered.

"What?" Hiei echoed.

"Well, according to this, Kuwabara has two flight tickets leaving from Haneda Airport tomorrow morning," Shuichi explained.

"Yeah, it's the "red-eye" flight!" Kuwabara said cheerfully.

"Haneda Airport is in Tokyo," Shuichi pointed out. "And in order to get there on time for this flight, Kuwabara also has two train tickets. The train leaves this city at midnight."

"It's a sleeper train!" Kuwabara said.

"Idiot!" Hiei cursed him. "Don't you understand what this means?"

"Huh?" Kuwabara echoed, tilting his head slightly in confusion.

"We only have until midnight to get Yukina back," Keiko said quietly.

"Which is a little over twelve hours from now," Shuichi said.

"And, moving at the pace we'll need to because you humans are so slow, getting to the ice village and back to this city will take at least eight hours!" Hiei added.

"So I guess the time for planning is over," Shizuru muttered.

"Exactly!" Hiei said. "We have four hours to get our plan underway."

"Right," Kuwabara said, nodding and adopting a more serious expression. "So let's agree the details right now and get to it."

"Right," Shuichi said, handing the papers back to Kuwabara. "I'll disguise myself as a merchant. We need to find a remote location to create the breach in the Kakai Barrier – one that the SDF would have difficulty accessing, to help stall their pursuit of us and to buy ourselves a little more time before they catch up to us."

"Maybe I could contact spirit world and try to distract them too," Keiko offered.

"What about that thing Hiei said about merchants travelling in groups?" Kuwabara asked.

"I'll come with you," Shizuru offered, turning to Shuichi. "I'm a spiritually aware person, and I can handle myself. I'll come with you as a second merchant."

"No way, sis!" Kuwabara said. "It's too dangerous!"

"Kuwabara's right, Shizuru!" Keiko insisted. "You feel sick and sometimes faint when you're exposed to dark demon energies, you might die before you even get there!"

"But it makes more sense to send at least one woman to the ice village as a merchant," Shizuru argued. "I think I should go with Shuichi, and maybe we should take Maya with us too. She's got some psychic abilities, right?"

"No," Shuichi replied. "I agree with Keiko. You would be overwhelmed by the malevolence of the ice maidens, and Maya is not strong enough to withstand the conditions in the heart of demon world. It's too dangerous for any of you to go. Of us all, only myself, Hiei and Kuwabara can manage the journey with minimal suffering."

"Yeah, Shuichi's right," Kuwabara agreed. "I want as much help as I can get to rescue Yukina, but any one of you three girls would just slow us down and you might even ruin things for us – without meaning to, of course."

Shizuru glowered at her brother angrily but Keiko was nodding her head.

"He's right, Shizuru," she said gently. "If anything we should probably get out of the way and let them get on with what they have to do. We're slowing them down now with just our words. Let's go."

Hiei suppressed a sigh of relief as Keiko and Shizuru left, watching them go until they were out of sight, their disappearance making him feel momentarily more confident about the success of his plans for rescuing his sister: but as he turned back and saw Kuwabara looking confused and afraid and Shuichi looking concerned and eccentric he lost what little confidence he had been building up.

"We're fucked, aren't we?" he asked.

"No, we can do this!" Kuwabara said.

He looked determined, but he was visibly shaking, which robbed some of the credibility from his statement.

"I think we can make it to the ice village," Shuichi said quietly. "But beyond that the success of our plans lie in the hands of fate, because beyond that we have no contingency plan for dealing with the wrath of the ice maidens, any warring demons we may encounter and of course the inevitable intervention by the SDF."

His jaws were tightly clenched but his apprehension was apparent regardless of how stern he tried to make himself look.

"We're fucked," Hiei sighed.

* * *

After almost two hours of sitting on the walkway outside of the tree-house, watching Kuwabara and Shuichi pace about beneath him and infrequently call out increasingly absurd ideas for how they should tackle breaking the Kakai Barrier discreetly and how they would approach the ice village without aggravating the ice maidens, Hiei started to consider reverting back to his original plan: he would force Kuwabara to cut open the Kakai Barrier by the nearest portal and he would go to the ice village alone, recover Yukina and take her back.

And if the ice maidens rebelled against him, or he got caught up in a fight on his way back with Yukina or the SDF sealed him in or managed to get Yukina from him and send her back to the ice village, he would just have to accept defeat.

And shortly afterwards he would die with the knowledge that he had failed to fix even one thing about his own lousy reality.

Hiei awoke from his thoughts when he noticed that Shuichi was climbing the ladder towards him. He stood up and moved aside, letting Shuichi join him on the walkway.

"We're getting nowhere," Shuichi said.

"We're just wasting time, is all!" Kuwabara added, climbing up beside them.

"We were thinking we should just get ready and leave right now," Shuichi said.

Hiei gave him a curious look, but Shuichi continued into the house, leaving him guessing at exactly what he had meant.

"So, uh, do you have any ideas about any good places we could break the Kakai Barrier?" Kuwabara asked Hiei once Shuichi had disappeared from their line of sight.

"I don't care any more," Hiei flatly replied. "We just have to get Yukina back and take her to safety. We now have, at best, ten and a half hours to do this and we only get one shot at it. We can't mess it up."

Kuwabara nodded. A prolonged and awkward silence passed between them he spoke again.

"Shuichi's really been thinking a lot about this," he said. "He's really cunning, he'll probably think of something. He always did think of really clever ways to get us out of trouble before, right?"

"That was Kurama," Hiei said with a sigh. "They are two different people, you immense t–"

Hiei stopped abruptly as Shuichi rejoined them on the walkway, dressed in an extravagant kimono and fur scarf, his hair pinned up at the back of his head and an open fan in one hand.

"What do you think?" he asked them.

"I think even the blindest old bitch from the ice village can tell the difference between a tall, broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, flighty, idiotic, big-handed geisha with a five o'clock shadow and a mentally unstable man enjoying being dressed as a woman a little too much!" Hiei yelled.

Shuichi scowled at him before turning to Kuwabara expectantly.

"Um…" Kuwabara began, taking a cautious step back from him. "You uh… You are enjoying wearing that outfit a little too much, Minamino…"

"We all have to make sacrifices if this is going to work!" Shuichi snapped at him.

"Why is it that this is the first time you've become animated about something?" Hiei asked. "Nothing ever bothers you, but when someone tells you to ease off on the mascara, you suddenly get riled up!"

"I'm not wearing mascara Hiei, don't be silly," Shuichi replied.

"I was being sarcastic!" Hiei growled back.

"Sarcasm isn't going to help us now," Shuichi pointed out.

"Neither is arguing!" Kuwabara cut in. "So knock it off, you two!"

"I wasn't arguing," Shuichi defended himself.

"I'm not arguing, I'm getting pissed off!" Hiei snapped. "I'm surrounded by idiots! I'm trying to do something very important here, I need help from someone who actually has a brain and some skills and some common fucking sense!"

"Then turn around and open your eyes."

Hiei froze, his angered scowl melting from his face. He saw Kuwabara and Shuichi peering curiously over the walkway at something behind him, and he was almost too shocked to turn around and confirm that his ears had not deceived him. Eventually curiosity got the better of him and he did turn around, his face twisting further at what he saw.

Botan was standing by the end of the rope ladder, looking up at them with folded arms and a look of determination on her face, and Keiko, Shizuru and Maya standing behind her looking inappropriately optimistic and smug about something.

"When you three have quite finished bickering like children, let me know," Botan called up to them. "Us girls are ready to get our plan to rescue Yukina underway just as soon as you boys are."

Hiei blinked a few times to be sure that his eyes were not deceiving him: but, even after several blinks, Botan was still standing glaring up at him, a stubborn and confident determination radiating from her bright eyes.

"Hey Botan," Kuwabara called down to her. "What's with those weird clothes?"

"Get down here and I'll explain," she replied.

"You come up here," Shuichi called to them. "We have bottles of Ramune up here in all sorts of flavours."

Hiei glared at him but Shuichi merely smiled back at him. Botan began climbing the ladder and Shuichi then disappeared into the house in search of the drinks he had promised to procure. As Botan reached the top of the ladder, Kuwabara held out his hand to her, helping her – unnecessarily, Hiei thought darkly – up onto the walkway between them. Hiei slowly eyed her over before noticing the indignant look she was giving him.

"Go on Hiei," she said quietly. "Tell me how wrong this outfit is."

"It's not wrong," he immediately replied. "I was just wondering if you could explain to the deranged human in there that this is how a merchant approaching the ice village is meant to look."

Botan quirked an eyebrow at him, and he realised then that she was probably a little confused by his reply: had he been making a joke with her or had he been complimenting her on the accuracy of her choice of clothing? He was not really sure of the answer himself: she was dressed in baggy white pants, mid-length white boots with a fur trim, a white, knee-length, fur-lined overcoat which was open, revealing a silky white vest that barely showed the curves of her figure. Her hair was in its usual style, only instead of being pulled up into a simple ponytail it was loose braided, and she had even thought to wear a utility belt that hung at an angle from one hip, with pockets that looked quite convincingly like they held demon world currency and maps. Her outfit was alarmingly accurate – almost too accurate for a deity of spirit world to have thought up on her own volition – and yet it did also highlight the idiocy of Shuichi dressing himself like a cheap concubine.

"Tell them about your plan, Botan," Keiko said.

"Let's go inside," Shizuru suggested.

"You might want to be seated when you hear this one," Maya added, smiling sweetly at Kuwabara and Hiei in turn.

Hiei groaned but obligingly followed the women and Kuwabara into the house, perching himself onto a windowsill. Keiko, Shizuru and Maya sat on the couch, Kuwabara sat on the floor and Shuichi sat on an arm of the couch by Maya. Botan stood in the centre of them all, looking around them to ensure that she had their attention before commencing to reveal her plan.

"It starts with this," she said, producing a demon compass from one pocket.

Hiei's eyes widened but he said nothing. He could not help but associate the device with the one that Keiko had been given to track him down, and that only inspired negative feelings towards it.

"Lord Koenma and Captain Ootake – the leader of the SDF – trust me as an ally, and if I approach them with this compass and tell them that it is the same one they gave to Keiko, containing a locket of Hiei's hair, they will believe me," she said.

Hiei twitched but managed to stop himself from losing control of his emotions.

"As soon as the Kakai Barrier is broken, Lord Koenma and the SDF will know about it," Botan continued. "They will immediately try to get to the point of the breach and reseal it. The only thing that would distract them from that task would be if a powerful demon were to already be loose and causing problems here in the living world. They would treat capturing that demon as their priority, and they would leave the breach open to allow them to return the demon they were chasing back to demon world. If they think Hiei is running loose in the living world and causing trouble, they will, temporarily, overlook the breach Kuwabara will need to make in the Kakai Barrier."

"You're asking me to let those SDF bastards hunt me down like a dirty animal?" Hiei asked, no longer able to contain his disgust.

"No," Botan replied, giving him a stern look. "I'm going to send them on a wild goose chase, so to speak. Girls?"

The three girls smiled and flicked their hair over one shoulder. Hiei arched his eyebrows at them sceptically, and although their idiotic smugness was distracting, he did not miss Botan rolling her eyes and quietly sighing at his response.

"This compass contains a hair sample," Botan patiently explained, opening the compass and removing a piece of black hair.

Hiei instinctively smoothed a hand over his hair in search of the missing chunk, which made the three women on the couch smirk in amusement.

"This is not your hair, Hiei," Botan explained. "It's comprised of a hair sample from Keiko, one from Shizuru and one from Maya. I mixed small samples of hair from each of the three girls together, dyed them to look the same colour as yours and placed the result in here. Visually, this looks like the same compass and hair sample Keiko was given by the SDF. This type of compass is dependent on the DNA sample inside of it, it won't differentiate between demon and spirit energy, rather only focusing on the source of the DNA sample itself. By placing three different samples into it, it will create a conflicting signal that will confuse the SDF. If they get close enough to one of the girls though, the compass will start to hone in on that girl, so we've made preparations for that too."

"I'm taking my bike out over the west highway," Shizuru said.

"I'm driving my car out over the east highway," Maya said.

"And I've got a ticket for the northbound train," Keiko said.

"So I will give this compass to the SDF and tell them that Hiei is back in this realm and that he is causing trouble and they must locate him immediately," Botan said. "The three-way split directions will confuse the compass and the soldiers, and they will hunt down all three until they find them, assuming that one is the real Hiei, and the other two are false signals he has created to confuse them. Getting past that confusion and finding the girls will take them some time, hopefully long enough for us to make our escape with Yukina."

"Us?" Hiei echoed.

"Yes, us," Botan confirmed. "You, me, Kuwabara and Shuichi will go to the underground cave in the hillside south of the city – I think people around here call it "hell's cave", which is quite appropriate, in this instance. There is a portal to demon world deep in the bowels of the cave, and it occasionally lets minor demons through, which is perhaps how it got its name. We will go there and Kuwabara will open the Kakai Barrier. As we are far away, underground and in a difficult location to reach, that will also buy us some time before the SDF can catch up to us. Once Kuwabara has opened the breach, all four of us go through it."

"Wait, what?" Kuwabara interrupted. "You're coming to demon world with us, Botan?"

"Yes, I am," she solemnly replied. "Shuichi and I will approach the village as merchants. I will do the talking, since I at least have a woman's voice, and together we will distract the elders whilst you and Hiei get Yukina out. We will agree a meeting place and meet back outside of the village, and together the four of us will come back to the living world and make sure that Kuwabara and Yukina get on their train and their flight."

"Demon world is a very dangerous place," Hiei reminded her. "And you shouldn't be lying to spirit world – it's a bigger crime for you to lie to them than it is for us. I don't think you'll be forgiven for it, even if you are Koenma's lover."

Botan turned to Hiei, and the look on her face almost made him flinch: he sensed that she was about to say something he was really not going to like, but before she could, Shuichi interrupted.

"Taking Botan with us would be beneficial, actually," he said cheerfully. "She has excellent healing and defensive capabilities. She can create a barrier around us if we need it, she can heal any wounds we suffer, and, once we have Yukina, she can combine her powers with Yukina and they can put a protective barrier around us that will ensure our safe return to the living world."

"Hey, that sounds way better than anything we thought of, right Hiei?" Kuwabara asked.

"I'm just a little disappointed that none of us thought of asking Botan for assistance much sooner," Shuichi said.

"So we're all agreed?" Botan asked, looking around the others.

"Absolutely!" Keiko said, standing up and holding out one hand.

Shizuru stood up and put her hand on Keiko's, and Maya copied her action, putting her hand on Shizuru's. Kuwabara gladly joined them, putting his hand on Maya's, and Shuichi started towards them, only pausing when he noticed that Botan and Hiei were not joining in.

"We're all in this together," he reminded them. "I know the both of you are quite stubborn creatures, but let us put our differences aside and move towards a brighter future."

Hiei groaned and grumbled out a few choice curses, only forgetting his cynicism when her felt Shuichi grabbing his wrist and pulling him from his position on the windowsill.

"There we are," Shuichi said, smiling smugly as he pressing Botan's hand onto Kuwabara's and then placed Hiei's hand on top of Botan's. Hiei's eyes instantly locked onto Botan, who was already staring at him, looking every bit as shocked and uncomfortable as he felt.

"We don't have any more time to waste," Kuwabara said, pulling his hand free. "What do we do now, Botan?"

Botan hesitated as the others pulled their hands free until only her hand remained in the air along with Hiei's. They stayed that way for several seconds before Hiei noticed that Shuichi had let go of them both, and they were only still in that position because neither had bothered to move their hands. Botan faltered slightly and then snatched back her hand, looking downwards briefly before turning to Kuwabara.

"You and Shuichi go to the cave," she said, remembering to answer his question despite her distraction. "The girls will go to their starting points and I will call Captain Ootake and give him this compass. I'll meet you at the cave."

"Right!" Kuwabara said. "Come on, Minamino!"

Shuichi nodded and hurried after him. Hiei watched them leave the room, only turning from them as Keiko, Shizuru and Maya started to leave too.

"Hey, wait!" he protested, reaching out a hand towards them.

The girls paused but Botan waved a hand at them to urge them to continue, and after a few furtive glances at Hiei they did so, leaving Hiei alone in the tree-house with Botan.

"I'm going to call Captain Ootake to Yukimura Restaurant," she said quietly, looking down at the compass as she spoke. "It's quite a long way from the restaurant to the cave, and I was wondering if you would come for me and take me there."

Hiei started to tell her that what she had just described sounded like a trap: she was asking him to attend her meeting with the leader of the spirit world Special Defence Force, after all. But as he saw the look on her face his voice faded and he waited to see what justification she had for her request.

"I'm just…" she muttered. "Not very fast… And you're so… Fast."

"Hn, you want me to carry you back to the cave?" he asked.

"Um… Yes."

Hiei stopped again as Botan turned her head away from him. He had not failed to notice the colour filling her face before she turned it from his view, and he took a moment to consider exactly what she was asking of him. He had only ever carried her on his back once before – in the paradise reality, when he had carried her up and down the mountain behind the lodge, and she had been pregnant then. Hiei could not stop his eyes from raking over her form as he remembered how it had felt having her body against his in that position before. He started to smirk involuntarily as he considered that she had to put her legs around his hips for him to carry her, but she turned back to him then and he was forced to hide his feelings again.

"I think even if you were carrying me, you would still move faster than I could on my own," she said.

"Hn, obviously," he replied as nonchalantly as he could.

"So… If you could do it, that would be… Super…"

Botan chewed at her lip and fiddled with the compass a little before continuing.

"We should establish a signal," she said. "So that I can alert you when I'm ready for you to come for me."

"No need," Hiei said. "I'll watch over you, and I'll know when it's time for me to make my move."

Botan frowned slightly.

"That sounded a little… Um… Like something else…" she muttered. "Well, never mind. I'll go and… Do what I have to do, and you–"

"I'll take you there."

"Wh-what?"

"I'll take you there. It will be faster. I'll run away while you call for those spirit world lackeys, and I'll watch over you from a safe distance until you've completed your part of the deal."

"…You don't trust me. You're following me because you think I'm going to report you to spirit world."

"I never said that."

"You didn't need to. Hiei, I was with Keiko when you arrived back in the living world – and we knew the exact moment that you did, because the demon compass started going berserk – if I had wanted to report you to Koenma, I would have done so back then."

A small part of Hiei could not help but notice that Botan had just omitted the honorific from Koenma's name, but he was too distracted to pay it too much attention, and so he let it pass without question.

"…Why didn't you?" he asked instead.

"Because Yukina was my friend, I want to help rescue her," she replied. "And, honestly, you've been doing a lot of good since you got back, and I wasn't about to stop you."

Hiei stopped. He could not really argue with what Botan had just said, but he did not really like the way she had made him sound like some sort of well-wishing weakling from spirit world, passing over the living world and bringing good things and happiness to everyone he came into contact with.

"And this is a beautiful house," she added. "I can completely understand why I… I mean… It's very pretty…"

Hiei narrowed his eyes slightly, silently wondering just what Botan had really been about to say before she had looked away and become quiet.

"We should go," she said, pretending to be interested in the strap of the demon compass.

"Right," he agreed.

He walked ahead of her, leaping from the walkway and jumping down the branches of a nearby tree as Botan climbed down the rope ladder. He met her by the edge of the forest and they stood there for a few seconds, both avoiding looking directly at each other before Hiei turned his back to her and crouched down, waiting for her to climb onto his back. She acted quicker than he had expected her to, and he mechanically wrapped his arms around her legs and stood again, trying not to think about how it felt to have her body pressed so closely against him. Though it was quite difficult to do that when she cuddled into his shoulders and moved her face close to base of his neck, her warm breath gently caressing the hairs at the base of his scalp.

She had not held on this intimately in the paradise reality, he noted.

* * *

Hiei thought about Kuwabara, Shuichi, Keiko, Shizuru and Maya. It was still quite strange to him that they were so keen to help him. He supposed they were actually helping Yukina, and not him, but it was still strange for him to work alongside them as though they were all equals. Maybe they were all equals. Maybe the war in demon world and everything that had happened along with it had changed things. Maybe differentiating between individuals based on whether they were demon, human or spirit was wrong. Maybe, after his sacrifice to end the war in demon world, things would change all round. Maybe there could be harmony between the three worlds. Maybe that residue of liberal political acceptance clogging up his brain from his invasion of Hitoshi's mind would yet become a reality. Some other reality. It could not really happen in Hiei's reality. Or maybe it could once he had died. Maybe he was the one thing stopping the norm reality from being something better than the dystopia that it actually was. The dystopia where Botan was in a human body, obviously at the start of her ten-year human trial so that she could become Koenma's wife.

As deep as his thoughts were, none of them were providing the distraction that Hiei had hoped they would: he was still running down a craggy cave, with Botan bouncing about against his back and he would have to be dead not to recognise how good that felt.

Botan had done as she had said she would: she had handed to loaded compass to the idiot leader of the Special Defence Force and she had returned to meet Hiei alone, and they had then taken off towards the cave Kuwabara and Shuichi were already at. Time was starting to become an issue: a glance at a clock on his way out of the city had told Hiei that it was already 2:30pm, meaning he had nine and a half hours to get to Yukina, get her out of the ice village, get back to the living world and get her to the train station. He intended to follow the train to its destination and then to follow Yukina until he actually saw her board the airplane with his own eyes: only then would he allow himself to believe that the plan had actually worked.

Because honestly, he still had serious doubts that the plan would work: after all, this was the dystopia reality where everything went badly for Hiei, and Yukina was his twin sister, and so she was probably doomed to suffer just as he did.

"You can put me down now, we're nearly there," Botan said, awakening him from his thoughts.

He grunted a response and slowed to a halt, carefully releasing his hold of her legs. She stepped back from him and straightened out her clothing and they continued their journey at a comfortable walking pace, both silent for the first few minutes.

"You don't have to…" Botan began awkwardly. "I mean you… Hiei, why are you holding my hand?"

"The ground is very uneven, and it's dark down here," Hiei replied. "You might fall and slow us down."

Hiei was glad of the dark then, because he was pulling a face of disbelief and contempt: even he knew that what he had just said was a pretty poor lie, and he was disgusted with himself for saying it.

"I can manage fine on my own," Botan insisted.

"Fine then," he said.

Hiei opened out his fingers and pulled his hand, halting abruptly as his action was met with resistance. He turned to Botan questioningly and she looked back at him with wide eyes. In the darkness around them if was difficult to see the look on her face, but the awkward shape of her eyes told him that she knew that she had made an error. She released his hand and they walked on separately and in silence until they reached Kuwabara and Shuichi at the end of the cave.

"Hey, check this out!" Kuwabara greeted them.

He shone his flashlight at the underside of his face and growled playfully.

"Stop that," Hiei warned him.

"Why, are you scared Hiei?" he asked.

"No, but that image will give me nightmares," Hiei muttered.

Shuichi chuckled and Kuwabara grumbled out a few insults against Hiei before passing the flashlight to Botan and focusing his attention on producing his spirit sword.

"We will have to move quickly and stealthily once we reach demon world," Shuichi whispered to Botan and Hiei.

"Why are you telling me that?" Hiei asked. "Idiot, I came here from demon world!"

"I hope this works," Kuwabara said. "I hope the SDF don't catch up to us."

"They won't," Botan assured him. "And even if they do, they'll have to get through me before they touch anyone else."

Hiei was taken aback at her words, and as the glow of Kuwabara's sword illuminated her face and he was afforded a clear view of the angry determination there he realised that she genuinely had chosen to side with them over spirit world: which was surprising, especially as she was trying to become Koenma's wife.

"Here goes," Kuwabara said.

He stepped through the portal and a crackling, whining, whooshing sound informed them that he had cut into the Kakai Barrier.

"No going back now," Shuichi said almost too cheerfully before he hopped through the portal.

"On you go," Hiei said to Botan.

She paused, eying him over before complying. He followed closely behind her, and, for the first time in over ten years, he passed between the living world and demon world in his own reality without any Special Defence Force soldiers ready to kick him through it if he hesitated.

On the other side, Hiei fell a short distance before landing alongside Kuwabara, Shuichi and Botan, who were all looking about themselves. By luck, they had landed in a desolate wasteland a few miles east of Gandera, an area that had never seen much action even before the war had started, and so was a relatively safe point for them to start their journey from.

"What now, Hiei?" Kuwabara asked as he dematerialised his sword.

"We need to move in that direction," Hiei replied, pointing out towards the horizon. "We'll get as close to the ice village as we can. Then we'll split up, do what we have to and meet back at the point we split up from."

"Right," Kuwabara said. "What do we do if one group gets back to the rendezvous before the other?"

Hiei narrowed his eyes slightly.

"We can't afford to waste time," he eventually answered. "We wait five minutes, and then we leave. No matter which group it is that made it back, you must return to the living world after that time. Is that clear?"

Nobody nodded, but equally nobody protested Hiei's order, so he had to simply hope that they would comply when the time came.

"Let's not waste any time now, either," he added.

"Let's go," Kuwabara agreed.

Kuwabara and Shuichi began running in the direction Hiei had indicated and Botan glanced at Hiei, flashing him an optimistic smile.

"I'll carry you," he offered.

"Okay," she said.

She climbed onto his back again and as he started to run after the others Hiei wondered what surprised him more: the fact that he had offered to carry Botan again or the fact that she had agreed so readily.

* * *

Hiei was surprised that they made it to the ice village without incident, and he was even more amazed when Shuichi and Botan managed to distract the entire council of elders with their merchant act and he and Kuwabara were able to enter the village from the rear completely unnoticed. They hurriedly found their way to the house Yukina was hidden in, creeping inside to find her in exactly the same place she always was when Hiei had looked for her with his jagan eye: sat by a window overlooking their mother's grave, looking miserable and lifeless.

"Yukina!" Kuwabara cried, dropping to his knees in front of her.

She moved her large red eyes to him, blinking a few times curiously before a sense of clarity started to take form on her features.

"Kazuma?" she said faintly.

"That's right, Yukina my love!" he replied. "We've come to get you out of here!"

"Kazuma, what are you doing here?" she asked. "Don't you know how dangerous it is for you to be here? If the elders caught you, or if those spirit world soldiers–"

"It's fine," Hiei cut her off. "Now get up and let's get out of here."

She turned her head to Hiei, staring at him as though she did not recognise him at first.

"M-Mister Hiei?" she eventually said. "Oh my! What are you doing here? The ice maidens won't take kindly to a male fire demon entering their village! You have put yourself in great danger! You must leave immediately!"

"We are leaving," Kuwabara assured her. "And we're taking you with us."

He stood up and held out a hand towards her. She looked down at his hand for a long time before turning back to Hiei.

"I don't understand," she said softly. "Why would you both come here now? Surely you must have known of the dangers of coming to this place?"

"We came for you, Yukina!" Kuwabara told her.

"But why?" she asked him.

"Because I love you, Yukina," he said. "And you're not happy here. You were happier in the living world with your friends, and I want to take you back to that life."

Yukina turned to Hiei again.

"I can't leave," she said. "Not again. The elders wouldn't approve. They've changed since I was last here. They treat me with contempt because of what I did and what I had become. They don't approve of contact with anyone outside of the ice village, least of all men like–"

"I'm your brother."

Yukina and Kuwabara both stared, wide-eyed at Hiei.

"What?" he asked them.

"Maybe you could have picked a better moment?" Kuwabara muttered. "Or said it a little more… Tactfully?"

"I never cared for tact," Hiei spat at him. "Now Yukina, you have a choice," he continued, turning to Yukina. "You can stay here with these heartless witches or you can come back with your brother and… Him," he said, flicking a thumb at Kuwabara on his last word.

Yukina's face started to change, a hint of a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. She started to say something but she was cut off as someone else burst into the room, staring fearfully at Hiei and Kuwabara.

"Uh oh…" Kuwabara muttered, his eyes moving to the ice maiden watching them.

"Miss Rui," Yukina said, turning to her.

"Yukina," Rui said, glancing at Yukina. "These people…"

"This is Kazuma and Mister Hiei," Yukina explained.

"Hiei…" Rui said, her eyes moving to Hiei. "The emiko…"

Yukina turned sharply to Hiei.

"Is-is he really my brother?" she asked, her eyes still on Hiei.

"Yes," Rui replied.

Hiei narrowed his eyes at her and she bowed her head slightly.

"Please, I mean you no ill will," she said. "I know Yukina was happier in the living world. If you have come for her, I won't stop you. Just please hurry, and be careful! If the elders catch you, they… Just please, be careful!"

Yukina started to stand and Hiei nodded at Kuwabara, who grabbed her hand, pulling her up.

"Miss Rui, I…" Yukina began, looking back at her friend.

"Just go," Rui insisted. "Please. Be free. Don't think of this place again."

Yukina nodded and turned to Kuwabara.

"Take me home," she said.

He nodded and Hiei gladly hurried out of the house ahead of them. Kuwabara hurried after him, pulling Yukina with him. She began blabbering nonsensically about Hiei being her brother and how she had never really forgotten about Kuwabara and the red thread that connected them, but Hiei was not really listening. He could see very little through the freezing fog that permanently clouded the air around the village, and the ice crystals that formed it were getting into his eyes and stinging painfully. He just wanted to get back to the rendezvous point and ensure that Shuichi and Botan had managed to get away safely.

But then something happened that made the inside of his body feel as cold as the fog around him.

"Emiko," a rough voice called out. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

Hiei stopped short and turned, squinting through the fog. He could barely make out a collection of figures facing him, and as Kuwabara and Yukina stopped at his side, the air began to clear slightly, and the sight ahead of him became clear – and he almost wished that the fog had remained, if only to spare him the pain of seeing what had happened.

The elders were standing in a line facing him, two of them holding a partially undressed Shuichi on his knees and the chief elder herself was holding Botan by her braid and pressing a lethally sharp icicle to her throat.

"Fuck," Hiei cursed under his breath.

Of course the plan had failed: this was the dystopia reality, and nothing he could ever do could ever change that, he thought bitterly.

"Did you think we were stupid?" the chief elder asked him. "Sending in two humans dressed as demons to distract us – and one of them is a man, no less!"

"Hey, back off!" Kuwabara yelled at her. "I know what you've been doing to Yukina here, and you can all rot in hell! We're taking Yukina back home, and you can't stop us!"

"Yukina is home," the elder replied.

"This isn't her home!" Kuwabara argued. "A home is meant to be a happy place, and Yukina sure ain't happy here!"

"Isn't this delightfully absurd," the chief elder said with a sigh. "The one emiko we cast out who did actually survive has become a human sympathiser. And he's obviously ashamed of what he was born as, since he's tried to alter his powers by having a jagan implant."

Hiei bit back an insult and resisted the urge to draw out his sword and start staining the perfectly white snow around him red with blood.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"The question is what do you want, emiko?" the chief elder asked him. "Do you want to leave with Yukina, or do you want to leave with this human woman?"

"What?" Hiei echoed.

"You heard me," the chief elder replied. "We'll let you leave, but you can only take one of them with you: either you take your sister or you take the human girl."

"Don't listen to her!" Botan cried. "Just go! Take Yukina and get out of here!"

"What are you saying, Botan?" Shuichi yelped.

"I'll be fine," Botan insisted. "Lord Koenma will look after my soul in the afterlife. Just take Yukina and get her out of here!"

"Right!" Kuwabara agreed. "Thanks, Botan!"

"No!" Shuichi yelled, his voice suddenly ragged and unusually loud. "Don't do it Hiei!"

Hiei paused, deciding to allow Shuichi to continue, if only because his tone and expression were surprisingly distressed for a character who was normally so calm and collected. And, of course, he was not exactly keen on the idea of letting Botan die again because he had once more decided to abandon her in a dangerous situation.

"Botan's trying to help you," Shuichi said. "But she's doing it at the expense of her own soul. Koenma won't look after her if she dies. He's still angry with her for defying him. She chose to become a human against his wishes. If she dies, she'll be erased from all existence! Don't let them kill her, Hiei!"

"Shuichi Minamino!" Botan snapped. "Hiei was right about you: you do have a big mouth!"

"And you have a propensity for martyrdom that is downright infuriating!" Shuichi snapped back. "Hiei, don't rush into this! If they kill Botan, none of us will ever see her again!"

"Well what do you suggest we do, you sneaky smart-ass?" Kuwabara yelled. "Are you saying that we should just leave Yukina here? After all we went through to get here and rescue her? And these evil witches treated her bad before, what will they do to her after this? We can't leave her here!"

"I'm not suggesting that you do!" Shuichi replied.

"Then what are we supposed to do, huh?" Kuwabara demanded.

"I-I don't know…" Shuichi said faintly.

Seeing Shuichi admit defeat was as bad as the moment Hiei had first realised that the elders had seen through Botan and Shuichi's disguises: this truly was the worst outcome that could have arisen from his mission to rescue Yukina.

"You better make a decision fast, emiko," the chief elder warned him. "If you don't, we're going to kill the man."

Hiei glanced at Shuichi, who did not seem to care that his own life was in danger, which only made him feel even more confused and conflicted. He looked at Yukina and saw that she was starting to adopt the same dull and empty look of hopelessness she had been wearing for the past three years stuck in the ice village, which made something start tugging at his chest. He turned to Botan and saw that she was still looking determined to sacrifice herself, despite there being dire consequences – if what Shuichi had said was true, then apparently she was not taking her human trial to become Koenma's wife after all, and that gave him a small sense of hope – but despite her attempts to remain stoic, her eyes were watering and a tear slid down her face, freezing into a small, glimmering droplet of ice as it hit the frozen ground, making it look almost ironically like a hirui stone.

And in that moment, Hiei realised that, no matter what he decided, he was going to have someone's death on his conscience.

"Fuck," he cursed. "Just… Fuck!"

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Oh the emo! It's quite the pickle for the gang as the fates of Botan and Yukina hang in the balance and eventually the situation is resolved when one of our heroes makes a noble sacrifice to appease the elders of the ice village: with some rather unexpected consequences, all of which drive the situation further away from the paradise reality. **Chapter 42 – Life Without Regret**

 **A/N:** I don't think this is too much of a cliff-hanger, since I think some readers will already know what is coming. (It's one of those "tying back into the paradise reality" moments, this time with regards to Yukina – ref. chapters 25 and 33.)

Advanced plot 180 warning for the next chapter…


	42. Life Without Regret

**A/N:** **Plot 180 warning**

 **I make absolutely no apologies for the contents of this chapter – because, as utterly terrible as it is, it's one of the few I had planned right from the start of this fic.**

 **I officially fail at writing angst…**

 **Recap:** Botan came forward with the best plan for recovering Yukina from the ice village, and it was all hands on deck as Shizuru, Keiko and Maya fled to confuse the SDF, Botan laid the trap, Kuwabara broke the barrier, and Hiei, Shuichi, Kuwabara and Botan went to the ice village. Hiei and Kuwabara found Yukina and started to leave with her, but they were stopped by the elders of the ice village who had seen through Botan and Shuichi's ruse and taken them prisoner, and Hiei was told he had to chose between the lives of Botan or Yukina (oh noes!)

* * *

 **Chapter 42: Life Without Regret**

"You better make a decision fast, emiko," the chief elder of the ice village warned Hiei. "If you don't, we're going to kill the man."

"Fuck," Hiei cursed. "Just… Fuck!"

He lowered his head, his mind infuriatingly going blank. That other Hiei never had to overcome shit like this, he thought bitterly. Could it be any harder? How could he possibly choose? He was getting sick of trying to think of answers all the time and he almost wished that someone else would make a decision for him. Or that he could just go back to paradise and forget all about the disastrous dystopia of his existence.

He moved one hand slightly and the elders all shuffled about, the two pushing down on Shuichi's shoulders gripping their fingers tighter into his skin and the chief elder tightened her hold on Botan, the icicle she was using as a weapon pushing into the small puncture it had already created in Botan's neck, a small amount of brilliant red blood welling up around the point of contact. He looked back over his shoulder again and saw that, by the look on Kuwabara's face, if he did choose to save Botan, Kuwabara probably intended to stay in the ice village with Yukina, even if that meant an instant and unpleasant death by deep-freeze.

Hiei contemplated doing the one thing he had promised himself that he never would: fulfilling the ice maiden's archaic and myopic prophecy of his life and reducing the entire village and its populace to ashes. It was an option, but getting the innocents clear would be tricky, not the mention the fact that igniting a giant floating island in the sky was likely to draw attention from the warring demons deeper in the heart of demon world, and he could not afford to do that, as it would make it impossible to safely return Yukina to the living world. The same rule applied to using the Dragon of the Darkness Flame: apart from the light show it would create in the sky (visible for miles around) the energy the attack gave off would alert every eager demon looking for a fight, and would definitely not go unmissed by Mukuro, Kurama and Yusuke.

And attracting the attention of any one of those three was the absolute last thing Hiei needed in an already overly complicated moment of indecision and tension with lives hanging in the balance.

And it was typical that his decision was the only thing that could end the moment. How ironic, he thought, after all those lectures he had endured from Shuichi on the importance of good decision-making. Shuichi who was now silent and looking completely lost and useless. Hiei wondered what Kurama or Yusuke would have done.

Or even what that other Hiei would have done: but he only entertained that idea briefly, because he already knew that life-changing, character-testing moments like this never happened to that other Hiei.

If he was destined to live any length of time, Hiei wondered if Mukuro would ever be able to send him to the reality that would be born from the decision he did not make there and then. And he wondered how different it would be. It would probably be better, since he apparently always made the wrong decisions, so he supposed that the best thing to do would be to consider what his initial reaction would normally be, and then do the exact opposite, since that had as good a chance of bringing a happy outcome as anything else.

"No. This is wrong."

Hiei's head snapped up and he watched with wide eyes as Yukina tugged her hand from Kuwabara's. She looked torn between infinite sadness and disgusted anger, but she marched forwards, ignoring Kuwabara's pleas for her to stop.

"I won't stand by and let you kill my friends," she said to the elders. "If I have to stay here forever to save their lives, then that's what I'll do."

Hiei growled in frustration, trying to ignore the smug smirk and noise of satisfaction coming from the chief elder.

"Yukina, no!" Kuwabara said.

"Stop," Yukina said sternly, holding up a hand.

Kuwabara stumbled to a halt a few steps behind her, staring at the back of her head in disbelief.

"You don't have to do this, Yukina!" Botan added.

"Yes I do," Yukina said.

She sounded determined, but Hiei could tell by the uneven tone of her voice that she was close to tears.

"I have never agreed with the way of life in this village," she continued. "I despise it. I hate the way you all close yourselves off from the rest of society as though we're so much better than the other creatures of this world. I hate the way we carelessly cast baby boys from the cliff-tops like they're nothing more than pieces of waste we don't want dirtying our village. We despise the black ash of fire because we fear how it contrasts against the pure white of the snow all around us, the sign of our purity. I hate the way we use our isolation from the rest of demon world as an excuse to isolate ourselves from our own feelings. I hate the oppression. I hate the monocracy. I hate the way radical thought and feelings of love are frowned upon. I hate the bigoted, ignorant minds of you, the elders, the supposed wise ones of this village. Look at yourselves: you're pathetic. You're cold and cruel, and you shun us all from the outside world, but you've been detached from it for so long, you don't even understand it any more yourselves. Why are you making that decision for us when you don't even know what else there is out there?"

Yukina sniffed and paused long enough to hold back her tears before continuing.

"It sickens me," she said. "You're all pathetic and worthless. And look at me: I'm the worst of all. I had the chance to see the wonders of the world beyond this village and the wonders of the living world too, I got to experience true friendship and love. And I was too stupid and too naïve to understand what it was, too ignorant to appreciate how lucky I was to have all of those things until it was too late and I had already lost them. Kazuma, I'm so sorry that I never returned your devotion."

Kuwabara opened his mouth to answer her but no sound came out.

"And Hiei," she continued, turning to Hiei. "My brother… I'm so grateful that you came here for me. And I'm so glad that I found you. I always wanted to find you. I never cared what anyone else in this village thought because you're my brother, you're my family, and the bond between family is so much more important than any of this lunacy."

Yukina turned back to face the elders and sniffed again.

"Botan, you were a good friend," she said. "And I will gladly take your place today."

"No," Botan said, shaking her head and inadvertently stabbing herself further onto the icicle held at her throat, causing it to burrow deeper into her skin and the blood that had been pooling around the wound to trickle down her neck.

"Yes," Yukina said firmly. "I'll stay in the village. Please release my friends."

"Silly girl," the chief elder told her.

Yukina waited until they had released Shuichi and the chief elder had shoved Botan clear of their reach before continuing.

"I'm going to stay, but I ask that you kill me," she said to the chief elder.

"What?" Kuwabara wailed. "No!"

He started to run forwards but tripped over Hiei's foot and was caught by Shuichi, who stubbornly held him back.

"I'd rather die than live here like this any more," Yukina continued. "And I hope that my death will help others in this village to realise that there is another way of life, that they do have a choice, they don't have to put up with your oppression."

"If you're going to be rebellious, you're a danger to us all and better off dead," the chief elder said.

"Fuck you, you old hag!" Hiei spat. "You really think that I will stand by idly and let you kill my sister?"

He tore his sword from its sheath to underline his threat, but the chief elder merely laughed.

"Didn't you come back here for your revenge, emiko?" she asked. "Wasn't that your plan? To burn our peaceful village down with your flames of malice and to throw me off the cliff because that was what I ordered be done to you when you were born?"

"Throwing Hiei off the cliff was the best possible thing that you could have done for him!" Yukina said loudly. "I wish you'd thrown me with him!"

A chorus of gasps filled the air, confirming Hiei's suspicion that the entire population of the ice village had gathered around, lurking in the cover of the freezing fog to watch the events unfolding before them.

"You threw him from this village because you thought that the fall would kill him or else life outside of the village would," Yukina continued. "But you were wrong. He lives. And he is proof that there is a better life to be had outside of this village. You did him a favour casting him out. Look at what he's become: he is far more noble and accomplished than the entire council of elders combined! You hate him because you fear him, and you fear him because you don't understand him, and you don't understand him because he feels. He thinks independently, and he isn't afraid to express himself, and you don't like that. His life has been superior to mine because he has always been free to express his feelings, and I envy him that freedom. Hiei was not the first emiko you cast out and he won't be the last: but I hope his presence here today teaches you that boys born into our community are not the evil that you think they are. We're evil. We're wrong. And if I have to die today to prove that, then I gladly will."

The chief elder sighed.

"You foolish child," she said.

"Why don't you just let her go?" Kuwabara shouted at her.

"No, this is the way it has to be," Yukina insisted.

"If you kill her, then I'll kill you, you mean old hag!" Kuwabara warned the chief elder.

"Do you see the influence of the emiko?" she asked the other ice maidens. "He had poisoned the minds of these pitiful humans, turned them to violence and cruelty! Although it is arguable in this case: a man is a man, demon or human, and they are never to be trusted. The emiko hasn't come here out of good intentions – don't be fooled! He is here today because he wants to exact his revenge on us for casting him out in the most crude fashion imaginable: he seeks to throw us off the cliff here because a simple, aggressive mind like his will only ever understand violence."

"Hn, I wouldn't waste my time on that," Hiei sneered. "You're already dead anyway."

"What about you, Yukina?" the chief elder asked, turning to Yukina. "Do you want to seek revenge on me because I ordered your brother be thrown from the cliff? Are you thinking about throwing me from the cliff too?"

"It would be a fitting end for you," Yukina coldly replied. "To make you suffer the same fate you have sentenced countless innocent children to. And if you survived the fall, perhaps you would be lucky enough to learn how wrong you've always been about life."

She sniffed and lifted her chin in the air, trying to maintain an air of dignity despite clearly being only a heartbeat away from breaking down and sobbing openly.

"But I won't push you from this cliff," she continued. "I wouldn't stoop that low."

"I would."

Hiei's breath caught in his throat, and for a long time he was frozen on the spot, not so much as breathing or blinking as he watched the point where the chief elder had been standing and listened to her voice fading as she plummeted from the village. Yukina seemed to be similarly debilitated, only recovering when the sound of the chief elder's cry faded completely. She then turned to the face behind the still outstretched arms that had pushed the chief elder from the village.

"M-Miss Rui?" Yukina said faintly.

"It's okay, Yukina," Rui said, putting an arm around her shoulders.

She then took on a look of almost feral determination and looked about herself.

"Yukina's right," she announced loudly. "Don't you see? We've lived this way for too long now. Times have changed, life has evolved and progressed, but we have not. We are strong and intelligent individuals: why are we living in fear of such outdated and ignorant myths about life? It's time we made a stand and demanded more. Look at Hiei!"

Hiei flinched as Rui pointed in his direction and he hurriedly returned his sword to its sheath.

"The elders told us that he was evil," she continued. "They told us that he would kill us all. But look at him: he is wiser than we are, and he came here today simply because he loves his sister. His will is not one of anger it is one of passion, we simply misunderstood and misjudged him. We have the capacity in our hearts to love, why are we oppressing it? Can you honestly say that you agree with what these elders preach to us?"

Rui's question was answered only by the whistling of the wind. For a long and awkward moment Hiei was sure that the entire population of the ice village would start attacking him, Rui, Yukina, Kuwabara, Botan and Shuichi, and he tensed himself accordingly, his fingers on his right hand dancing in the air above the hilt of his sword, ready to grab the weapon out again and wield it defensively at any moment. Then a single ice maiden slowly walked out of the fog and into their line of sight, her eyes filled with tears.

"You killed my baby boy!" she screamed.

Hiei flinched as she delivered a surprisingly devastating kick to the gut of one of the elders, sending her off the edge of the cliff after the chief elder.

"You fools!" one of the other elders said, stepping forwards.

"You're the fools!" another ice maiden said, stepping out of the fog. "Yukina and Rui are right about you."

"Either you admit to your mistakes or you back down," Rui said to the elders. "You can continue to live here and you can even continue to isolate yourselves from everything and everyone else around you, but you will not dictate our lives to us any more."

"And if you don't like that, we'll do to you what you did to Hiei!" another ice maiden added, stepping out of the fog.

Hiei, Kuwabara, Shuichi and Botan began backing awkwardly towards each other as more and more ice maidens began appearing from the fog, the sheer number of them surprisingly the onlookers.

"What the hell is going on?" Kuwabara whispered as his back collided with Hiei's and Shuichi's.

"Isn't it obvious?" Shuichi whispered, backing into Hiei and Botan. "They're rebelling."

"Is that a good thing?" Botan asked. "Or are we all going to die?"

"It's a good thing," Shuichi replied. "We should encourage it."

"Encourage it?" Kuwabara repeated, frowning down at him curiously.

Shuichi smiled and nodded, and Hiei knew by the look on his face that he was about to do something ridiculous, but for some reason he could not find the motivation to stop him, instead watching as he cupped his hands at either side of his mouth and said something that made Kuwabara, Botan and even Hiei himself cringe.

"Overthrow the elders!" he called out. "Nominate a new leader by the power of democracy!"

"That's a good idea!" one of the ice maidens said. "We should choose who we want to run the village, not just follow the rules of those bitter old hags!"

"Show them you reject their old ways!" Shuichi added.

"Would you shut-up?" Hiei hissed at him.

He looked down at Hiei and gave him a smile that was just begging to be punched from his face.

"Show them you disagree with their fear of fire!" Shuichi continued. "And show them that you are independent women of individual thought: burn your bras!"

"What?" Kuwabara and Hiei yelped, rounding on Shuichi.

"It's the ultimate symbol of female power," Shuichi casually replied, waving a fist in the air as he said the word "power", making his response seem all the more absurd.

"I'm all for these women making a stand," Botan said. "But burning their underwear is a step too far. I think you're only suggesting they do that so that they will take off their bras."

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," Shuichi replied with a shrug.

"Did-did you just say something dirty?" Kuwabara asked, his face twisting in confusion.

Shuichi smiled, fumbling in the folds of his dishevelled kimono, which was hanging around his elbows and hips, his upper body bared to the cold air, and the waistband of his decidedly male underwear clearly visible, his hair half fallen out of its effeminate style, making him look utterly absurd. He eventually found what he had been looking for, his smile widening. He swiped a hand at Kuwabara's face, ignoring the way Kuwabara yelped and turned from him, touching a hand to the point of contact he had made.

"What the hell, Minamino?" Kuwabara yelled.

Shuichi walked off, cradling a hand around the lit match he was holding between the fingers of his other hand.

"That hurt!" Kuwabara shouted.

Botan looked up at the red line on Kuwabara's stubble-covered cheek where Shuichi had struck the match to ignite it, looking concerned and sympathetic for a brief moment before smiling and turning from him, her shoulders lifting and a soft snort of amusement sounding from her nostrils.

"Idiot," Hiei sighed, shaking his head at Kuwabara.

"What the hell did I do?" Kuwabara cried defensively.

Hiei turned back to Shuichi, watching him tear a piece of his kimono and lay it down on the ground, setting it alight. He built a shallow wall of snow around the fire and then proceeded to tear off pieces of his clothing and gradually add them to the blaze to strengthen it.

"It's beautiful!" one of the younger ice maidens said, kneeling down by Shuichi and reaching a hand towards the flames.

"Oh no, don't touch the flames!" Shuichi warned her.

"But why not?" she asked him.

"Because they'll burn you!" one of the elders hissed viciously.

"Touching ice causes burns too!" Rui snapped at her.

"Yes, that's right!" another ice maiden said. "One is hot and the other is cold, but both burn, suffocate and damage skin."

"So fire and ice are similar, in some ways?" another ice maiden asked.

"Yes, that's right," Rui answered her. "We all have basic fundamentals in common, regardless of our powers. We are all parents, siblings, cousins, friends, grandparents, we all fight for what is important to us, we all enjoy the security of love and friendship, we all strive for success in our chosen ambitions and we all sometimes need to be reminded to just open our eyes and take a look around at the beauty and simplicity of life. It doesn't matter that we are apparitions of ice and that Hiei is an apparition of fire, or that those others are human, it doesn't matter if we are male or female: we are all the same inside and there's no reason why we can't all live in harmony. Even if we don't truly understand each other or want the same things in life, it doesn't mean that we can't strike a balance and find our own way, to exist peacefully alongside each other, pursuing our own goals without excluding others or shunning anyone who is different from ourselves."

"You say such beautiful things, Miss Rui," Yukina said.

"I should have spoken up long ago," Rui replied sadly. "I should have fought harder when the elders shunned your mother. She was my best friend and I let them cast her son out and I watched her slowly fade to death. She was a like a rose in barren land: she was radiant and unique, but she withered in this empty and worthless place."

"But you spoke up now," Yukina said. "And I think that's wonderful."

"I couldn't have done it without you, Yukina. I couldn't have stood by and let them take your life like they did to your mother and tried to do to your brother. The courage and spirit you showed today inspired me to make a stand."

"Rui's right!" another ice maiden cried. "You should be our new leader, Yukina!"

"Yukina for leader of the glacial village!" another ice maiden called out.

Kuwabara and Botan exchanged confused and bewildered expressions as the entire population of ice maidens began chanting for Yukina to become their new leader. Hiei was too busy concentrating on keeping himself upright to react.

"No, ladies, please!" Rui called out, gradually silencing the crowd. "Don't pressurise Yukina like that! She can't be our new leader – even though I agree that she is an excellent candidate for the role – because her place is in the living world with her friends. We must let her leave today, we must not tie her to this place with the responsibility of leadership. But she will be free to return here whenever she wants now, without fear of the elders mistreating her any more, and we will welcome her back on those occasions. And Hiei too, of course."

Hiei twitched, trying to avoid looking directly at any of the sparkling female eyes looking in his direction at that moment.

"You should be the new leader, Miss Rui!" Yukina suggested. "You're an excellent diplomat!"

"I'm no diplomat, Yukina," Rui said, shaking her head. "I speak from my heart, not my head."

"Sometimes that's a better attitude and approach for a great leader," Shuichi said, winking at Hiei.

Hiei groaned, silently wondering when that idiot was going to stop interfering.

"Now I say let's celebrate with a bra burning!" Shuichi said.

Hiei, Botan and Kuwabara all balked and then all almost fell over when several women around the village yelled out in agreement with Shuichi's plan and started stripping off their clothes. Hiei watched, with one eye twitching painfully, as a portion of the ice maidens threw their bras into the fire and began dancing around it, only awakening from his trance as they began kissing Shuichi and Yukina and then started towards his group.

"Fuck…" he muttered, backing up nervously.

"Oh God…" Kuwabara whimpered, staggering back with him.

Botan glanced back over each shoulder in turn at each of them, apparently not understanding their concerns, and shortly crying out in surprise as the ice maidens began hugging and kissing at her, her form quickly becoming swallowed up in the mass of celebrating ice demons: apparently centuries of repressing their affections had turned them into rampant nymphomaniacs, Hiei concluded.

"Wh-what do we do?" Kuwabara asked Hiei.

"I don't care what you do," Hiei coldly replied. "I'm getting out of here!"

Hiei dashed off, almost finding it amusing that Kuwabara was then also consumed into the midst of the ice maidens, who began showering him with kisses. Hiei continued on until he reached Shuichi, who was warming his hands on the fire – a necessary action, as he was now wearing no more than a rather neat-fitting pair of red underpants, a pair of pure white tabi socks and a pair of wooden tatami sandals – hardly enough to keep him warm in the sub-zero climate of the ice village.

"You fucking fool!" Hiei greeted him.

"Isn't this wonderful?" Shuichi asked him.

"No, it's damn well not!" Hiei argued. "What the hell did you do to these women? They've become as insane as you are!"

"I merely assisted them in discovering their–"

"Don't you dare try to weasel your way out of this with fancy words, you twisted, insane, selfish, obnoxious, arrogant – hey!"

Hiei stiffened as he found himself suddenly surrounded by topless woman kissing at any part of him they could reach. He thought that he might be getting embarrassed, but it was hard to tell, since his cheeks were being bombarded by the cool lips of the ice maidens, and it was confusing his sense of whether or not his face was getting any hotter. They started to ease off and he started to think that he would make his escape: but then they hoisted him up onto their shoulders and began chanting his name.

"This never happened in paradise Shuichi, you cunt!" he yelled over his shoulder.

Shuichi shrugged at him, smiling in a way that was beyond infuriating to witness. He gritted his teeth and tried not to think about how utterly ludicrous it was to be carried aloft around the ice village like some sort of trophy or hero, waiting as patiently as he could until the crazy bitches eventually set him down again alongside Yukina, Shuichi, Kuwabara and Botan; and as he rejoined them, Hiei saw something that sobered him slightly.

Yukina was sobbing into one sleeve of her kimono (thankfully she was one of the few ice maidens who had not stripped off and started dancing about like a whirling dervish).

"Hiei…" she said weakly as she caught him watching her.

"Fuck you, Shuichi!" Hiei said, turning to Shuichi. "Do you see what you've done? You've upset Yukina! You made her cry with your stupid, foolish, idiotic–"

"No Hiei, I'm not sad," Yukina sobbed.

Hiei's head snapped back towards her and he eyed her over in confusion.

"You're crying," he reminded her.

"I'm crying because I'm so happy," she said, more tears escaping her eyes and falling to the ground, adding to the small pile of glittering hiruiseki around her ankles. "It's like a dream come true."

Hiei looked around at the crazy witches dancing around the fire and kissing each other, the disgruntled elders cringing away from it all and the band of fools he was somehow surrounded by.

"This is a dream for you?" he asked sceptically. "Do you understand the difference between the words "dream" and "nightmare"? Because I think you used the wrong word in this instance."

"This is a dream come true for me," she replied, nodding her head. "I always dreamed about the women of this village making a stand and changing their way of life, of them accepting you – my brother – of them embracing other cultures from beyond the confines of this village. I always wanted to tell the elders how wrong they were, to help the other women see that they could have a better way of life, but I was never brave enough to do it before today… I feel so…"

"Liberated?" Shuichi offered.

"You don't get to have an opinion any more!" Hiei snapped at him.

"No, please brother, he's right!" Yukina said. "I do feel liberated! I feel like I'm finally free to be happy, to be truly, honestly happy… This was my own regret in life, and now that I've had the courage to stand up to it and fight for it, I feel so… Wonderful! I don't suppose any of you understand, because you are so brave everyday, and you all stand up and fight when you need to, but I've never had that opportunity or the courage to do something truly meaningful. I'm so grateful that I got this chance to make a change."

Hiei turned to Shuichi, his eyes thinning into raging slits of red.

"Idiot!" he growled. "This is wrong! In the paradise reality, Yukina always harboured that regret! She never resolved it! You've ruined this!"

Shuichi laughed at Hiei's words, and Hiei was so shocked at his reaction, he did not attempt to kill him, despite desperately wanting to.

"Well now, my good friend," Shuichi said, dropping a hand onto Hiei's shoulder. "Which reality do you think is better, from Yukina's point of view: the one where she harboured a regret, or the one where she resolved it and felt free and truly happy?"

"I'm glad that I had this opportunity to confront my regret, Hiei," Yukina added. "I remember what you used to always say: you said that you lived your life without regret and that it was the best way to live. And you were right, brother. Now that my life is free of regret, I feel wonderful! I thought it was too late to make a difference, but I've learned today that it's never too late to make a stand and do what's right!"

She looked as though she wanted to say more, but after a few seconds of trying to form words she finally just fell forwards, throwing her arms around Hiei's neck and clinging onto him.

"Thank you for freeing me, Hiei," she whispered into his scarf.

"…Hn…" he grunted, patting a hand against the small of her back. "You should have this back," he added as she pulled back from him.

He reached a hand under his scarf and pulled out the two chains hanging around his neck, checking them carefully before removing the one that was Yukina's and handing it to her. She took it from him with a bow of thanks, paused to check it against his, her smile widening and more tears falling from her eyes before turning to look up at Kuwabara, who smiled sheepishly back at her.

"Hiei says he approves of your love of Kazuma," Shuichi whispered to her, patting her on the shoulder.

Hiei growled at Shuichi and then turned to tell Yukina that, even though he had not exactly said it very eloquently, Shuichi was in fact correct: but apparently Yukina trusted Shuichi's word, as she had already looped her hiruiseki chain around Kuwabara's neck, pulling him down and pushing her lips against his in a kiss more fervent than the ones her fellow villagers had been passing out earlier.

"This is wonderful, but aren't we pressed for time?" Botan asked nervously. "We have to cross demon world again, and we don't know that we won't encounter any trouble on our return journey."

"Take me with you!"

Hiei tensed as an excitable young ice maiden came sprinting towards them, waving frantically at them. She was, thankfully, one of the few villagers who was still fully dressed – though her hair was mostly fallen from its ties and her smile was borderline psychotic.

"My friends and I have excellent defensive capabilities," she said eagerly. "We can build the strongest barriers, and create the thickest, coldest, freezing fog to stun and confuse an enemy! Take us with you, we'll gladly protect you on your journey, brave ones!"

""Brave ones"?" Hiei grumbled.

"That would be wonderful actually," Botan told the ice maiden. "Gather your friends, we have to leave immediately."

The girl nodded and dashed off again, calling out the names of her friends and waving them over to join her. Unfortunately, Hiei noted, of the six ice maidens who were apparently going to assist them on their return journey, only the one who had initially approached them was fully dressed. He turned to the others in the vain hope of finding something to distract himself from seeing the ice maidens turned into something that only an idiot like Shuichi could have turned them into, finding Botan waving cheerfully at the girls – which was crazy – Shuichi smiling his most smug smile yet – which was infuriating and Yukina and Kuwabara still locked together at the lips and hips – which was nauseating.

"Well, I think this was a successful venture," Shuichi said cheerfully.

Hiei moved his eyes to Shuichi again, only then noticing the lipstick kiss-marks littering his face, neck, arms and upper body. He looked like the fool that he was, Hiei thought.

"You're a shit," Hiei told him.

"Perhaps I am just a little," he replied with a shrug.

And in spite of himself, Hiei smiled and shook his head.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Flanked by the volunteers from the ice village, the gang hurry back to the living world to catch the train to the airport. Hiei does some soul searching and has a serious conversation with Shuichi before exchanging "nice friendly" gestures with a certain someone (ref. chapter 8!) **Chapter 43 – Nice Friendly Gesture**

 **A/N:** Yes, I think I went too far with the ice village emancipation, but it's actually very necessary for me to pull off part 5 of this fic (which starts soon). Also, it was important that Yukina of this reality got past the one thing that stopped her life being perfect in paradise (ref. chapters 25 and 33 – I was laying it on thick back then having Yukina repeat this regret to Hiei so that I could do this chapter successfully).

See, this fic is predictable, but the liberation of the ice village was the one ace I kept up my sleeve – and that's all the surprises over now, I'm afraid!


	43. Nice Friendly Gesture

**Recap:** Lucretia officially failed at writing angst when Yukina stood up to the council of elders and inspired the other ice maidens to rebel. With a little help from Shuichi, the ice maidens took control of the village from the elders and offered to help escort Hiei, Kuwabara, Botan, Yukina and Shuichi back to the living world.

* * *

 **Chapter 43: Nice Friendly Gesture**

There's no chance for us  
It's all decided for us  
This world has only one sweet moment  
Set aside for us  
Who dares to love forever  
When love must die?  
But touch my tears with your lips  
Touch my world with your fingertips  
And we can have forever  
And we can love forever  
( _Who Wants to Live Forever_ , Queen)

"You look quite pleased with yourself," Botan said tersely.

"Not at all," Shuichi replied with a shake of his head. "I give full credit for this mission to Hiei."

"Interesting," Hiei grumbled. "I give full blame for this mission to you."

"I learned something today," Botan said.

"Never take this idiot on an important mission?" Hiei asked.

"Almost," Botan replied. "I was going to say that I finally appreciate now that Shuichi and Kurama really were two different people. Two very, very different people…"

"Hey, I think you guys are being really unfair," Kuwabara cut in.

"Yes and you also think that complimenting an ugly cat and growing a stupid little beard are good ideas, so nobody cares what you think," Hiei shot him down.

"We couldn't have done most of what we did without Minamino," Kuwabara pointed out.

Hiei and Botan turned to Shuichi, who was in the process of finger-combing his hair free of its ties and smiling lazily at the most attractive of the ice maidens accompanying them across demon world.

"He's a cocky bastard who almost let his attraction to jail bait girls seal all of our fates today," Hiei concluded.

"I'm not sure it was right for him to tell all the women in the ice village that they should burn their undergarments," Yukina said meekly.

"He never does what's right," Hiei told her. "He's an idiot."

"I quite like having him around," Kuwabara whispered loudly to Yukina and Botan. "With him here, Hiei only insults me half as much."

Botan and Yukina both started laughing, the sound and sight of which was so pleasant to Hiei, he forgot to snap back at Kuwabara.

"What are we going to do when we get back to the living world?" Yukina asked once the moment of merriment had passed. "Won't those mean spirit world soldiers come looking for us, Hiei?"

"Oh don't worry about that," Botan assured her. "We have them distracted for now."

"How do we know that they're still distracted?" Kuwabara asked.

"The girls are all carrying communicators," Botan replied. "I've told them to press the emergency alarm when they get caught – because they will eventually get caught – and none of them have pressed it yet."

"Hn, that's assuming that all of Koenma's wastrels fell for your little ruse," Hiei pointed out.

"Apparently they did," Shuichi said.

"And how would you know that?" Hiei asked him.

"I called each of the girls while Kuwabara and I were waiting for you and Botan to meet up with us in the cave," Shuichi replied, waggling a cell phone in the air. "They had each become aware that they were being pursued, and I added up the number of soldiers they each reported, and it came to nine: and that accounts for the entire squad, including the commanding officer."

"I don't like you," Hiei said in a low voice.

"Is that a good sign?" Kuwabara asked Shuichi. "Because before he said that he hated you, and now he just doesn't like you. I forgot my Hiei dictionary: does that mean that he like considers you his equal now or something?"

"Do you know I do believe it does, my good friend," Shuichi answered him.

Hiei scowled at Shuichi, but the redhead continued to smile back at him, as unaffected by his ire as ever. He was wearing an extravagant boa of blue-centred white flowers from the ice village, a gift some of the more delirious ice maidens had insisted on inflicting on all of their "heroes": Yukina and Botan were wearing crowns of flowers on their heads and Kuwabara had a garland of flowers around his neck, their blue pollen rapidly staining his white shirt.

Hiei had avoided having any flowers forced onto him.

"When I look at you, an old human saying about monkeys and typewriters springs to mind…" he grumbled at Shuichi.

"Oh come on, Hiei!" Kuwabara said. "Just admit it: we couldn't have done this without Minamino's help."

"We all did our part in this," Shuichi replied. "And I think that you perhaps did more than any of us, Kuwabara."

"Well, gee, I dunno about that…" Kuwabara said, blushing slightly and becoming awkward.

Yukina smiled up at him and cuddled into his arm (which she was clinging onto in a way that almost looked painful, forcing him to stoop slightly as they walked).

"I guess I did my part," he said. "But no more than anyone else, right Hiei?"

"Hn, fools and scissors are both sharp when manipulated correctly," Hiei plainly replied.

"Damn it, Hiei!" Kuwabara snapped. "Why do you always have to do that?"

Yukina frowned up at him and he softened slightly before explaining his outburst to her.

"Hiei can't ever say anything nice to anyone without qualifying it with something nasty."

"That's true," Shuichi agreed. "I have also observed that quaint little quirk to his persona."

""Quaint"?" Hiei echoed.

"Indeed," Shuichi said, looking suddenly bored with the conversation.

"In Hiei's defence, he's hardly the quirkiest character of this little rag-tag group of ours," Botan said.

Hiei gave her a withering look.

"That's not saying very much, considering this "rag-tag group of ours" includes a lunatic, a clown, a dominatrix and now an entourage of hedonists," he said.

"Who-who's the dominatrix?" Kuwabara asked, eying the top of Yukina's head nervously.

"I think he means your sister," Shuichi replied.

"Oh…" Kuwabara said, nodding slowly. "Hey, wait a minute! That's not very nice, Hiei! Shizuru helped us out just as much as anyone else, and now she's out there getting hunted down by the SDF, and they're probably gonna arrest her when they catch her! She put herself in danger for us, and she's my sister, so don't say nasty things about her!"

"Nasty but true," Hiei flatly replied.

Kuwabara rolled his eyes skyward and seemed to consider Hiei's response, which made Yukina, Shuichi and Botan giggle.

"I do hope the girls are alright," Botan said once the moment had passed and Kuwabara still said no more on the matter. "The SDF themselves won't be happy when they find out that we tricked them, and I can only guess at how Koenma will react…"

Hiei smiled upon once more hearing Botan forget to call Koenma "Lord" Koenma, barely caring when Kuwabara, Shuichi and even Yukina gave him questioning looks for his inappropriate response to Botan's words.

"They'll be fine," Shuichi assured Botan. "I told them that if they were taken before Koenma, they should simply plead innocence in ignorance."

Botan's face twisted.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"I told them to tell him that they were forced to do what they did by Hiei," Shuichi casually replied.

"What?" Hiei snapped, rounding on him angrily.

Shuichi shrugged and flicked a stray strand of hair over one shoulder.

"I told them to say that you hypnotised them into doing it," he said. "We could hardly have them tell him the truth: that Botan deliberately sabotaged their attempts to capture a criminal and to close a breach in the Kakai Barrier. The girls and Botan would have been punished severely for such a crime."

"And I won't be?" Hiei asked sarcastically.

"Well, Koenma already hates you, and he has already banned you from the living world and spirit world, so you don't really have anything to lose by incurring his wrath yet again," Shuichi pointed out.

Hiei started to argue the point but stopped when he noticed Kuwabara, Botan and even Yukina were nodding in agreement with Shuichi's last statement. He had never cared what that bratty toddler overlord of the underworld thought of him before – and in many ways he still did not – but the idea of pissing Koenma off was suddenly strangely unsettling. Hiei wondered why that was. It was so annoying that it was making the insides of his eyeballs itch. Koenma was a symbol of spirit world, and Hiei had always believed that spirit world, and everything in it, was completely detestable. He had always felt that there was not one single redeeming feature about anything in or from spirit world, and that the place was completely pointless.

But, as he crossed the dusty plains of demon world, accompanied by Kuwabara, Botan, Yukina and Shuichi, their group flanked by a bevy of ice maidens, Hiei suddenly realised that his opinion of spirit world had changed.

When the hell had that happened?

And, more importantly, why had it happened?

It was probably more of that political propaganda that had been left polluting his brain after he had delved too deeply into Hitoshi the ambassador's thoughts. It was probably the idea Hitoshi had about a sort of coalition between all three worlds – an idea Hiei knew Mukuro was secretly a fan of and had always been trying to impress the necessity of upon the other two factions of demon world. Hitoshi was dead and with the war in demon world raging on and the Kakai Barrier isolating demon world from the other two worlds Mukuro was unable to do anything about advancing the theory, but the hope of it one day becoming a reality was apparently destined to live on: inside Hiei's brain.

It was a stupid idea and one with no merit anyway, he tried to tell himself. It was impossible to enforce, especially in his own reality – it had not even existed in the paradise reality, where spirit world had barely tolerated demon world and vice versa.

And then maybe there was one other reason why making a bigger enemy of Koenma was a bad thing to do: and as he considered it, Hiei found his eyes wandering to the source of it.

"What?" Botan asked as she caught him watching her.

"You…" he began, his brain pausing before offering up a suitable lie to cover his little slip-up. "Still have a puncture wound from where the chief elder of the ice village stabbed you."

"Oh," she said, touching a hand self-consciously to her neck.

Hiei then had to wonder which of them looked more confused when Botan, on instinct, touched a hand to the side of her neck nearest Hiei – even though the wound she did have was on the other side and outwith Hiei's line of sight, something they both quickly remembered when Botan's fingers failed to find the point of damage.

"Do you need me to heal that for you?" Yukina asked her.

"Um, no, that's alright," Botan replied, her hands dropping to her sides again.

"Well aren't you gonna at least heal it yourself?" Kuwabara asked.

Botan shook her head.

"No, it's fine," she said.

"It was quite deep, you might be scarred it you don't heal it," Yukina warned her.

"I don't mind bearing this wound because I got it protecting my friend," Botan said.

"What?" Hiei blurted out involuntarily. "He learned that from you?"

"He… What?" Botan muttered, frowning at him questioningly.

"I knew I didn't teach him that," Hiei muttered.

"…What are you talking about, Hiei?" Botan asked.

"Our son."

Hiei walked on three more steps before noticing that everyone else – including the half dozen ice maidens accompanying them – had stopped. He did not dare look back, mostly because he did not need to: he could feel every pair of eyes burning into the back of his head, and it was debatable which looked the most surprised. The moment dragged on until one of the ice maidens whispered a question about Hiei's fatherhood to one of her friends and then Shuichi reminded everyone that they did not have time to dally, and that they should continue onwards. Hiei started to walk again when he heard the others move, keeping himself a few steps ahead of them for the remainder of the journey back to the portal to the living world, feeling almost relieved when Shuichi filled the awkward silences that followed with mindless small talk.

At the portal Shuichi led the way in bidding goodbye to the ice maidens, and Hiei suddenly found himself being grabbed at as all six of them insisted on kissing everyone goodbye. He had not noticed if they had decided on this new custom themselves or if that idiot Shuichi had convinced them that it was a good idea, but he was too busy keeping himself tense against the cold and unwanted contact to care: the fact that they each insisted kissing both sides of his face did little to help hurry the process along either. Once they had finished kissing their way through everyone – Hiei noticed that they spent longer with Yukina and most of them returned to Shuichi at least once – they started back towards their village, talking amongst themselves and looking unnaturally cheerful for representatives of their clan. Though Hiei supposed the ice maidens would never be the same again, and the sight of those six women actually smiling was perhaps a portent of their future way of life.

And thinking that way felt strangely right somehow.

"Come on, Hiei!" Kuwabara said, snapping Hiei out of his thoughts. "It's not like you to be last to get anywhere!"

"Sometimes the joy to be had is in the journey, not the destination," Shuichi said whimsically.

Hiei rolled his eyes and followed after them through the portal.

"We don't have time to enjoy the journey, me and Yukina have got a train to catch!" Kuwabara protested.

"That's true," Shuichi said, before turning to Hiei to address the next part of his speech towards him. "And sometimes we just want to delay the inevitable, perhaps out of fear."

Hiei stopped walking, glaring at Shuichi as he walked on, apparently oblivious to how deeply insulting his words had been. Or perhaps he had meant to be that insulting, and he just did not care how Hiei now felt. Either was a possibility with an idiot like that, Hiei thought darkly.

"I'm not delaying anything," Hiei told Shuichi as he caught up to him again. "It was my idea that Yukina should leave with Kuwabara in the first place, remember?"

"But what then?" Shuichi asked, smiling humourlessly down at him.

Hiei wondered if Shuichi himself knew the answer to that question. After all, once he had assured himself that Yukina was on the airplane and on her way to safety, Hiei was going to turn around, run back to the breach in the Kakai Barrier and go back to demon world – permanently.

"That's a good point, actually," Botan said, distracting Hiei from his darker thoughts of what lay ahead of him that night. "What will Shuichi and I do once Yukina and Kuwabara get on their flight?"

"We shall have to catch a train back here," Shuichi answered her.

"Oh dear," Botan said. "I don't have enough money for a return ticket, only one way."

Shuichi smiled and Hiei saw a distinct twinkle in his eyes that immediately put him on edge.

"Don't worry, I can subsidise your fare," he said. "Between us we ought to have enough for two return tickets."

"Two?" Botan asked, glancing nervously at Hiei.

"Oh don't worry about him," Shuichi said, his smile widening slightly. "He doesn't like human means of transport, and I'm sure he can run faster than the train anyway. And besides, it's not like he needs the sleep like we do. We'll get ourselves a nice little cubicle with extra large seats so that we can really stretch out."

A small, logical, part of Hiei's mind told him that everything Shuichi had just said was true and benign: he was faster than the train, he would prefer to run than to board a human vehicle, and Botan and Shuichi would probably do no more than sleep on the journey. But a larger, illogical, chunk of Hiei's mind told him that everything Shuichi had just said was deceptive and malignant: clearly Shuichi was planning to lure Botan into spending the night with him and sharing a bed with him and he was just trying to get Hiei out of the way, and he was even enjoying doing it too.

"Give me your ticket," Hiei growled at him. "There's no need for you to go too."

"Actually, I should probably stay," Botan said. "I should wait here in case the SDF return and try to seal the breach in the barrier. I am best placed to stall them, since they see me as an ally and they wouldn't be suspicious of me if I hindered their progress."

"How gracious of you, Botan," Shuichi said politely. "There you are Hiei: you can come on the train and sleep with me."

"Ew…" Kuwabara muttered.

"It's not what it sounds like, idiot!" Hiei snapped at him.

"It's okay Yukina, our tickets are in the first class section," Kuwabara said to Yukina in a less-than-quiet voice.

"You can't come with us, Botan?" Yukina asked Botan.

Hiei was glad that Yukina had changed the subject, because his brain had just started to process the idea that he was going to be spending the night in a confined cabin with Shuichi and his sister was going to be spending the night in a confined cabin with Kuwabara.

"Well I could," Botan said. "But we don't have enough money for three tickets."

"I don't need a ticket," Hiei assured her. "I'll just run. You can take my place."

"You can share a cabin with me, Botan," Shuichi said.

Hiei had forgotten about that: the original reason why their travel arrangements had been bothering him.

"You-you must be tired, Hiei," Botan said to Hiei. "I don't like the idea of you running all night while we sleep."

"We could smuggle him on board," Kuwabara suggested. "He's so small, we could probably just fold him into a suitcase or something."

"I'm not "folding" myself into anyone's hand luggage!" Hiei snapped.

"We could put Yukina into a suitcase, she's even smaller than Hiei," Shuichi suggested.

"You don't get to have an opinion on this any more," Hiei warned him.

"Seriously though, we could put Hiei in the baggage compartment of the train," Kuwabara said. "He could sneak on while the baggage is being loaded, and nobody would ever notice."

"But it's cold and dark and uncomfortable in the baggage compartment of the train!" Botan protested.

"…I'm sure Hiei can tough it out, right Hiei?" Kuwabara said, turning to Hiei expectantly.

"I'll take his ticket, and we can put him in the baggage compartment," Hiei said, pointing at Shuichi as he spoke. "He was prancing around the ice village semi-naked earlier today, he obviously isn't affected by the cold."

"I have a better idea," Shuichi said.

"Don't you always?" Hiei sneered.

"We'll combine our money like we said and buy one first class return ticket," Shuichi said. "You and me, Hiei, will ride in the baggage compartment, and Botan can take the ticket and ride with Kuwabara and Yukina."

"Oh that would be wonderful!" Yukina said, smiling at Botan.

Hiei saw the downtrodden look on Kuwabara's face, and he had to admit that Shuichi's idea was actually the best one proposed so far.

"I don't know…" Botan said slowly. "I wouldn't feel right making both of you boys sleep with the luggage."

"Don't worry about us," Shuichi assured her. "I have a flashlight and a book to amuse me and sleeping in a baggage carriage is a step up from sleeping in trees, so Hiei will probably sleep better than usual, without the risk of falling from his bed with the first gust of wind."

Hiei was unsure if Shuichi had intended to insult him or not, but he certainly felt insulted after listening to the idiot talk.

"I would like it if you would travel with us, Botan," Yukina said to Botan. "I have so many questions for you. It's been so long since we last spoke."

"I don't want to intrude…" Botan said carefully, looking up at Kuwabara warily.

"Nah, it's okay, Botan," he said, sounding far more indifferent than he looked. "I'll have Yukina all to myself once we get on the plane. Come with us and get some rest. I think I've got enough money to buy breakfast for all three of us."

Hiei was mildly amused to see the slightly perturbed look on Shuichi's face then, as he had apparently assumed that he would be included in the breakfast plans.

"Well alright then," Botan agreed.

By then, they had reached the train station, and so Botan and Shuichi gathered together their money and Botan bought herself a first class return ticket aboard the train and Hiei and Shuichi set off to find a suitable point to sneak themselves onboard the luggage storage at the back of the train.

"I don't care if you don't sleep, but once the train starts to move, you are not allowed to talk to me until it stops, is that clear?" Hiei said as they walked the length of the platform.

"What if I have to relieve myself?"

Hiei stopped abruptly to glare at Shuichi, who simply returned his glower with a look of innocent confusion.

"It's a six-hour train ride," he pointed out. "I might need to go to the bathroom."

"…What for?" Hiei asked cautiously.

"To urinate?" Shuichi replied, tilting his head slightly.

Hiei sighed in relief, unable to hide how pleased he was to learn that he had misunderstood Shuichi's meaning.

"I don't think you'll find a bathroom in a luggage storage compartment," he pointed out.

"Yes, I would need to sneak into the main part of the train and use one of the toilet stalls," Shuichi replied. "And I would need you to watch out for me to make sure that I was not seen leaving and returning to the luggage carriage."

Hiei nodded slowly, looking about himself as they walked. As they passed a few benches, Hiei found what he was looking for and picked it up, holding it out towards Shuichi.

"What's that for?" Shuichi asked, carefully taking the elastic band from his fingers.

"Toilet control," Hiei bluntly replied. "Wrap it round tightly, and the need to go to the bathroom shouldn't be a problem any more."

Shuichi's face dropped briefly before picking up into a smile again.

"Oh Hiei, you are evil!" he said, elbowing Hiei in the ribs and causing him to stumble a step awkwardly. "What a wicked sense of humour you have!"

"Who said I was joking?" Hiei asked.

"Maybe you should take this," Shuichi said cheerfully, holding the elastic band out towards Hiei.

"Why would I need it?"

Hiei knew, the moment the words had left his mouth, that he was going to regret saying them, but unfortunately he had spoken before he had thought about who he was addressing.

"To keep your urges in check," Shuichi said. "Needing to use the bathroom is one thing, and quite easily resolved, but your little problem is a little more complex…"

Hiei stopped walking to glare at Shuichi again, his hand starting towards his sword, but Shuichi kept going, twirling the elastic band around one finger and humming an irritating tune to himself as he went. Hiei continued to glare after him until he saw him disappear aboard the train, at which point he resigned himself to spending the next few hours trying to sleep alongside the most irritating fool he had ever had the misfortune to become acquainted with – even more so than Kuwabara, Hiei thought bitterly.

He sighed and darted off, moving too fast for the humans milling around the platform to make him out, and launched himself through the open doorway Shuichi had disappeared through and quickly located him nestled down between a crate and some well-handled cardboard boxes. The compartment was quite tightly packed, and in order to remain out of sight, Hiei was forced to sit down next to Shuichi, less than half his own arm's length from him. There was insufficient room for both of them to lie down – without them lying on top of each other, the very thought of which made Hiei shudder. After all, Shuichi was still only dressed in his underpants, socks and sandals.

"Why did you burn your dress?" Hiei asked him.

Shuichi arched his eyebrows and Hiei heard his own words echo around his head and realised just how ridiculous they sounded.

"You looked less conspicuous dressed as a woman than you do… Undressed," Hiei added.

"Lend me your coat," Shuichi suggested.

Hiei did not especially want to relinquish his coat, but as he took another glance at Shuichi's barely-there underwear he found himself shedding it eagerly and throwing it at Shuichi as soon as it was clear of his body. Shuichi smiled and nodded in gratitude and Hiei grumbled out a few insults and gathered his scarf around his shoulders like a shawl – and as soon as he realised that he was wearing his scarf like a shawl he tore it off and threw it at Shuichi too, feeling far less surprised than he felt he ought to have when Shuichi promptly created himself an extravagant hat and neck-tie out of the scarf.

Hiei sighed and lowered his head, his eyes falling to the single hiruiseki still hanging around his neck. His own stone, the one Mukuro had returned to him, Yukina's stone now once more back around Yukina's neck.

Just like in paradise.

Hiei picked up the stone between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, lifting it up in front of his face to fully appreciate the calming influence looking into it awarded him. It was ironic, he thought, that he had taken seeing only his own hirui stone around his neck to be a sign that he was back in paradise up until not so very long ago. In some ways, paradise had become a more tangible reality, as some elements of it now existed in Hiei's own reality – some common denominators, as Shuichi would call them – that reminded him of how life could have been if he had said and done things slightly differently in his life.

There was no chance of returning to paradise now, he thought as he released the hiruiseki and let it fall back down to rest against his chest. Mukuro would never send him back to the original paradise, and his own reality was just too far beyond the point of repair. He had at least managed to get Yukina – and, inadvertently, Kuwabara – close to the lives they had enjoyed in the paradise reality, but that was as far as he could ever fix it. It was too late for Botan, Kurama and Yusuke. Botan was now facing a semi-comfortable existence as a human for the next ten years before she became a spirit and Kurama and Yusuke would be dead within the next day.

Hiei already knew that, as soon as he had ensured Yukina had made it safely onto her flight, he would have to immediately return to demon world, and there he would be immediately made to complete the task he had started the day Mukuro had sent him back to paradise.

He wondered if Mukuro would bother beating him or if she would just send him off on his mission. He had already wasted almost a month in paradise and in the living world in his own reality, she was probably too eager to see her plan through to fruition to want to delay it any further by taking the time to remind Hiei why she was still the ruler of her kingdom and he was still second best to her. Or maybe she would take the time to pummel him as a means of venting her frustration and expressing herself – he knew that one of the real reasons she liked to beat him up when he failed was because, secretly, she cared about him. In a strictly platonic sense, of course, since she mostly treated him like the child she had never had.

Except for in that one "sex slave" reality, where she had treated him entirely differently.

Hiei smiled in spite of himself and pulled out the reality chart from his pocket, laying it down between his feet. He unfolded it and smoothed it against the floor, his eyes locking onto the one part of it that he had almost forgotten about.

"I'm glad you took my advice there," Shuichi said, nodding at the words "if you get me out of here".

"You could fix the things underlined in red quite easily," Hiei read aloud. "And if you get me out of here, I'll help you fix the rest."

He turned to Shuichi, finding the idiot smiling as cheerfully as always.

"I've upheld my end of the bargain so far," he replied.

"I upheld my end," Hiei said. "I freed you. You didn't uphold your end entirely. Yukina is free, the tree-house exists and Kuwabara is presumably on the road to success, but everything else is still a mess."

"Well, I do have some ideas about how to fix that," Shuichi said.

"How to fix what?" Hiei snapped irritably. "I'm still amazed that what we've done so far has worked: in my previous experience, every time I make a change, things get worse and my life returns to the dystopia of my existence!"

""The dystopia of your existence"?"

"Yes. That was what Mukuro called this reality. She said it was the worst possible place my life could be."

"And the paradise reality was the best possible place that your life could be?"

"No."

"…No?"

"No. She said it wasn't the utopia of my existence, but it was close – which shows how little she knows about my happiness, because that reality was perfect in every way."

"No it wasn't."

"Yes it was!"

"…No it wasn't, actually."

"Yes it was, actually! And how would you know what that reality was? Were you there?"

"No, but didn't you say that Yukina harboured a regret about the fate of the ice maidens in the paradise reality?"

"Yes, so?"

"Well, she doesn't harbour that regret in this reality. She said herself that she feels liberated now because she had the chance to confront her fears and to free her people. She has pride in herself and a confidence and contentment she might never have otherwise had. This may not be the utopia of your life Hiei, but surely even a creature as self-centred as you are can see that this is now – thanks to your own good decisions, application of good judgement and hard work – the utopia of Yukina's existence… And it's probably the utopia of Kuwabara's existence too."

Hiei frowned but soon found himself smiling ever so slightly. He was going to die by a means he had never truly wanted to, but he had at least first made changes that were allowing Yukina to live the utopia of her own existence.

Kuwabara was just an accidental side effect, he told himself.

At least he had achieved something noble, he thought, something to be proud of: because killing Kurama and Yusuke by the most pitiful method really was not anything Hiei could ever feel good about.

"What are your plans when you return to demon world?" Shuichi asked him.

"The same as always," Hiei replied with a shrug. "To enact Mukuro's plan to try to end the war."

"I know it's not a very pleasant plan, and I know you dislike it," Shuichi said carefully. "But I would appreciate it if you would tell me what it is. Please remember that my paradise was taken from me because Kurama left me to participate in that war, and I do have a right to know what you have planned."

Hiei turned to him, finding the genuinely stern look on his face almost reassuring, partly because it was something of a relief to see him serious about something and partly because it made him look more like Kurama again.

"I have to kill Yusuke and Kurama," he said. "Mukuro thinks that killing them will make their armies lose focus, and she intends to take advantage of the confusion to initiate peace negotiations."

"…You're going to kill me?" Shuichi asked.

"Not you, Kurama," Hiei corrected him.

"Isn't that worse? You don't like me, but you do like Kurama. And Yusuke too. What about Keiko and Kuwabara and all of their other friends waiting for them back here in the living world?"

Hiei sighed and stood up, keeping his back to Shuichi.

"I can't be held responsible for everything that doesn't turn out perfectly in this reality," he groaned. "It's too much. I've already taken a glimpse at my own future, and it lacks hope, love and glory, and the happy ending you envisage is impossible and unattainable. You need to let go of this stupid idea about fixing things and making things right, and "building the foundations of paradise" out of "common denominators"… It's just grasping at straws, and its getting us nowhere. This is our fate now, we have to stop pretending that it can all somehow turn into something joyous and perfect. I couldn't even find the utopia of my life using inter-reality travel: I'm certainly never going to find it chasing foolish ideals around this fucked up life."

Hiei sighed again and waited for Shuichi to say something chipper, obnoxious and inappropriate, but the remark never came. After almost a full minute of waiting for it, Hiei started to realise that Shuichi was no longer in the carriage with him.

He turned around and found himself looking at Botan.

"I um…" she said awkwardly, looking down at her feet as she stubbed a toe against the floor. "I thought it might be unwise to leave you alone with Shuichi all night… I didn't think you would both survive it… Maybe you would have killed him or just… Killed yourself."

She smiled and lifted her head, meeting his eyes. He tensed but maintained eye contact with her, trying to suppress the increasing concern that she had probably just overhead most of his downtrodden monologue, and he felt foolish enough for having spoken it in front of Shuichi, he had certainly never intended Botan to hear any of it.

"I gave Shuichi my ticket," she said suddenly, avoiding his eyes as she spoke, her expression changing at her brow furrowing as though she might cry. "I got this… I don't suppose…"

"Take the tree-house," Hiei said.

"What?" she asked, meeting his eyes again, looking almost glad of the change of subject.

"Take it," he replied. "I have no use for it, and I ordered it for you anyway, so you should live there while you… Do your human thing…"

"But it's a family home…" she muttered, looking away from him again.

"So go and have a family."

Botan met Hiei's eyes again, looking suddenly annoyed. Inwardly he cursed himself and her: why could he never say the right thing to her and why did she always hate what he did say to her?

"I thought Shuichi told you back at the ice village," she said quietly. "I'm not marrying Koenma. Don't-don't you remember? You were there when he told me that he intended to keep me as some sort of trophy whilst he fathered an heir with someone else. I refused him then and I've never looked back. King Enma had already started the process of arranging my 10-year trial and my life as a spirit beyond it, and when I thought about it, I realised that it was still something that I wanted to do. I don't want to be a ferry girl any more. I don't know what the future holds for me, and I'm a little bit scared about it, but I'm going to confront it and try something different."

Hiei nodded.

"Don't you have anything to say about that?" Botan asked.

"Koenma is a bastard?" Hiei offered.

Botan's face dropped and Hiei realised that he had, yet again, said the wrong thing.

"He's under a lot of pressure," he said, his attempt at understanding sounding strained to even his own ears. "And he's so… "Young"… I'm sure he'll grow up to… Wipe his own ass one day… Or not, if he insists on keeping that overly submissive blue ogre at his side…"

"George only follows orders," Botan replied. "He has little other choice in the matter."

"I don't like to dwell on it," Hiei said flatly. "There is something greatly amiss about a semi-naked grown man kissing the feet of an infant…"

Botan sighed.

"Theirs is not a sexual relationship, Hiei," she said.

"I never said that it was," Hiei replied. "There's nothing sexual about Koenma."

"That's a little bitchy, don't you think?"

"No."

"I'm glad you paused to consider that… You know, Koenma is a very kind man, who always thinks of the welfare of others. He is a diplomat and you are a fighter: I don't expect you to understand him."

"You say diplomat, I say loser."

"…Are you sure that you want me to have the tree-house?"

"Absolutely."

"Well that's a very nice, friendly gesture."

Hiei narrowed his eyes slightly, taking a moment to sift through his memories to figure out why Botan's words sounded so familiar, eventually taking himself back to the "sex slave" reality – and suddenly finding a reason why his visit there had not been so awful after all.

"It is a very nice, friendly gesture," he said slowly.

"It certainly is," Botan said with a nod of her head. "I like living with Keiko, but it will be wonderful to have my own home and not to have to work such long hours any more to pay the rent on the room in the Yukimura house. I don't know how to thank you."

"…Maybe you could do something nice and friendly in return."

"…Like what?"

"How about a nice, friendly…"

Hiei suddenly found his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, preventing him from finishing the request he had found so easy to make back in the "sex slave" reality.

"A nice friendly hug?" Botan offered.

Just like in the "sex slave" reality, Hiei thought.

"…Usually you don't like people touching you…" she muttered.

"Just shut-up and get on with it," he said.

She arched her eyebrows tersely at him but stepped forwards regardless and put her arms around him: and suddenly Hiei no longer cared about anything else. Mukuro's plan, Shuichi's attacks on his conscience, the Special Defence Force undoubtedly wanting him dead, Koenma and the dystopia reality: none of them mattered any more. He simply moved his arms around Botan's waist and pulled her closer against himself and closed his eyes, resting his head on her shoulder. He could not clearly remember the last time he had simply enjoyed holding her in the paradise reality, so he decided to compensate now by enjoying his one last chance to create a memory he would take with him to his grave.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei and Botan talk… A lot… The gang arrive at the airport, and as they wait for the airplane to take Kuwabara and Yukina away, Botan has a proposition for Hiei. **Chapter 44: The Forbidden**


	44. The Forbidden

**Recap:** Hiei and the others returned to the living world and boarded the train to the airport. Hiei told Shuichi the exact nature of Mukuro's plan to end the war in demon world and Botan chose to give her ticket to Shuichi and stay in the baggage compartment of the train with Hiei.

* * *

 **Chapter 44: The Forbidden**

There's a place for us  
A time and place for us  
Hold my hand  
And we're halfway there  
Hold my hand  
And I'll take you there  
Somehow  
Someday  
Somewhere  
( _Somewhere_ , West Side Story)

Hiei would, theoretically, have stood amongst the boxes and crates holding Botan in his arms for the full six hours of the journey to Tokyo. In his mind, the only possible reason he could think of for breaking the contact was either to ask her for the "nice friendly kiss" he had been hoping for or else because the train had stopped and they had arrived at their destination. And at first, she seemed as determined to hold on as he was, as they stood embracing each other for quite some time. Eventually the moment did end, though not by Hiei's choice, as Botan began pushing his shoulders back from herself.

"I'm tired, let's sit down," she said.

Hiei reluctantly released her completely and watched her sit down on the floor of the carriage, resting her back against a crate. He realised then that she did look exhausted, and a strange though occurred to him: the journey to and from the ice village, combined with the stress of the showdown they had all endured there, was rather a lot for a human body to undergo in one day, and the fact that Botan was still awake and moving about on her own was actually something of a wonder. Hiei had never really thought much about the limitations of a human body before – simply because he had never had a reason to care about it before – but he was starting to think that Botan must be even more headstrong than he had assumed to have found the strength to force herself to carry on that day.

"It's been a long day," she said, as though to confirm his thoughts.

He grunted out a "hn" of agreement and sat down beside her. As there was only a minimal amount of free floor-space, he was forced to sit quite close to her, but she did not seem to mind.

"I'm glad that we got Yukina back," she said.

"We didn't exactly follow the original plan," he said, thoughts of Shuichi cheering on the rebelling ice maidens still far too fresh in his mind.

"But it worked," Botan pointed out. "And Yukina did always regret that none of the ice maidens had been given the opportunity to experience the joys of life that she had, and I know she'll be happy now that she's opened that door for them."

Hiei was tempted to tell her that freeing the ice maidens was potentially a bad thing, especially after seeing just how much they were revelling in their freedom, and that there was a distinct danger of them all going to extremes and spawning an entire army of fire demons – but as he thought through that idea in his own mind, he realised that it might not actually be so bad as it seemed: if the ice maidens did start having male children, they would now keep them and raise them as their own, and Hiei knew that most of his own anger and violence had simply been his way of rebelling against the rejection he had suffered as a baby. The ice maidens were not fighters, and maybe if they raised a few powerful fire demons in their village they would actually be safer from anyone taking advantage of them, as they would have powerful allies willing to protect them.

"I wonder what they'll do now," Botan mused.

"Not much," Hiei replied. "There's still a war in demon world, and unless they want to pick a side and enlist to fight, they will need to stay in their village."

"That's quite ironic," she said. "Just as they find their freedom, they can't take advantage of it. Still… I don't suppose the war will last forever."

"No."

"…I wonder what will happen when the war ends."

Hiei did not answer Botan, because frankly there was no answer he could give her. He had briefly considered the possible outcomes of the end of the war in demon world, but he had not given any of them serious consideration, as he would not be alive to find out which outcome came to be.

"It would be quite nice if the Kakai Barrier came down," Botan continued. "Then perhaps Yusuke and Kurama could return to the living world."

Again Hiei did not answer her. How could he? She was tired – physically, mentally and emotionally – and he was not really sure that she would be able to handle him telling her that neither Yusuke nor Kurama would ever return to the living world. Also, he thought, he did not really want to speak that idea out loud twice in one day, because a part of him still refused to accept it, and talking about it made it seem more real.

"I wonder what Kurama will think of Shuichi?" Botan asked, smiling to herself. "Do you think he'll be surprised? Or perhaps Shuichi was always that way and Kurama always knew it. Maybe that's why he never spoke much about himself – maybe there was always a risk that Shuichi would say something by mistake! Wouldn't that have been funny?"

Hiei allowed himself to think about what Botan had just suggested, and the idea of Shuichi – in his furry fox ears – standing ringside at the Dark Tournament and attempting to strategise against Karasu left him wondering if the idea was funny or just plain disturbing.

"I know Keiko will be pleased to see Yusuke again," Botan added. "She says she's angry that he left and broke her heart – and ruined her family's business – but I know that she's only hurting because she still cares for him. I think she'll be overjoyed to see him here in the living world again. It would be super if he came back for good this time – and I suppose there's no reason why he shouldn't."

"It's not that simple," Hiei said, no longer able to contain himself.

"Why not?" she asked innocently.

Hiei turned his head towards her, taking a long moment to search the genuinely confused and concerned look in her eyes before formulating his best attempt at a tactful reply.

"Yusuke is no longer in a form that would be acceptable to the humans of this world," he said carefully. "He no longer looks the same physically as he once did. Keiko wouldn't recognise him if she saw him now."

"I already know that he looks different," Botan replied. "I saw him when he came to meet with Koenma in spirit world. But you're wrong about Keiko: she was the only one of us who still recognised Yusuke the first time he transformed. She would recognise him no matter what became of him, because she truly loves him, and she is connected to him by…"

"A red thread of fate?" Hiei asked, raising his pinkie finger of one hand.

"Something like that, yes," Botan said with a smile. "Though perhaps a little less…"

"Hackneyed?"

Botan smiled and rolled her eyes.

"I think it's sweet that Kuwabara is so devoted to Yukina," she said. "And you should too. He'll always take very good care of her, and she adores him. What more could you possibly want for your sister?"

"I'd like it if he would shave that dead rat off his face," Hiei flatly replied.

"I think it makes him look quite distinguished," Botan said.

"Hn, it's hideous," he said.

"You're too harsh on him… Though I think he's actually appreciated your teasing him lately. I think he misses being teased by Yusuke. I think we'll all be glad when Yusuke comes back."

"Yusuke can't come back."

"Of course he can. He can just get a haircut, get a shirt and take some time to remember that he doesn't need to fight all the time."

"You shouldn't hold onto the idea that he will come back because he won't. And neither will Kurama."

"It's a little more complex for Kurama, I suppose. His form is more obviously less human, but he always was very sneaky, I'm sure he could disguise himself and find a place to settle here in the living world."

"He won't return here either."

"I don't suppose he needs to, but I'm sure he would like to see his mother again."

"She's not Kurama's mother, she's Shuichi's mother, and Kurama is no longer a part of Shuichi, so the bond has been broken."

"…I disagree. Kurama said that his mother's love for him changed his opinion of love and human-demon relations. I think he will want to see her again."

Hiei sighed, remembering the moment in paradise when Kurama had asked after the fate of his human mother in Hiei's reality: who had actually been asking that question, he wondered, Kurama or Shuichi? Which part of the Kurama he had once known cared about Shiori Minamino, Kurama or Shuichi? Or both? Did Shuichi love her as his biological mother and Kurama love her for the care and devotion she had shown him? Kurama had once – a very long time ago – told Hiei that it had surprised him that Shiori still loved him so fondly and tenderly when he had been cold and distant with her from birth, and that learning about her unwavering love had changed his mind and opened his heart to humans, and so maybe Kurama really had loved Shuichi's mother. Maybe he still loved her now. It was difficult for Hiei to guess what Kurama was thinking or doing any more, as he had not interacted with him for more than ten years, and the war had clearly turned him into something greedy and vicious – the many deadly demon plants he had littered no man's land with was proof enough of that. Those plants, Hiei thought, showed that the war had brought out the cruel, calculating, cunning and cut-throat side of Kurama, and it was possible that he had forgotten any other way to be.

Yusuke was possibly different. His request to Koenma that the Kakai Barrier be removed to allow him access to the living world could mean one of two things: either he wanted back to the living world because he missed his life there or he wanted access to the living world to expand his empire. The Yusuke Hiei had always known had never been a power-hungry dictator, but there was no telling that he had not since become just that: after all, Kurama had clearly turned into something despicable, and he was the oldest and most sensible of them all. Yusuke was young and impetuous and the power and responsibility that he had taken on since the beginning of the war could have done all sorts of irreparable damage to his psyche.

Hiei realised that, before that moment, he had not given any serious consideration to what had become of Yusuke or Kurama in the years they had been separated, and when he thought about what had become of himself, he realised that he may be confronting two very different souls when he enacted Mukuro's plan. Maybe that would make the task easier to do, he decided. Maybe Yusuke and Kurama would be so far removed from their old selves that killing them would be a painless operation.

Or maybe it would be harder: was it really their fault if they had become something different? Did they really deserve to die for it? This was supposedly the dystopia of Hiei's reality, so why then did anyone else have to meet a miserable end? Did it have to be the dystopia of their lives too?

"You still have a flower in your hair."

Hiei immediately moved his hands to his head, dragging his fingers through the length of his hair until he uncovered the offending object, taking it around to inspect it. It had wilted considerably with the heat of his body, something it was obviously not accustomed to, being a species that grew only in the tundra region of the ice village. He slowly lifted his eyes, seeing several more of the same flowers, almost as withered, strung around Botan's head like a halo.

"You still have an entire garden in your hair," he told her.

"Oh!" she gasped, her hands flying up to grab at the flowers in question.

She lifted the ring of flowers from her head, but as they had wilted, she was left with numerous petals and strands of blue pollen in her hair. She placed the crown down by her side and began dusting the remaining stray flower particles from her head, missing most of them and inadvertently smearing the pollen into her scalp, leaving darker blue streaks in her hair. By the time she had stopped her task, the top of her head was littered with dark blue stains, and after some time of staring at them Hiei finally realised why they looked so familiar to him: they made her hair exactly the same colour as Monzan's.

Hiei lowered his eyes to Botan's face and she smiled at him, and in that moment he wondered why he had ever thought that Monzan looked like him, when quite clearly he had inherited many of Botan's features.

"I maybe had flowers in my hair," she said, her smile widening. "But you have lipstick all over your face."

"What?" Hiei yelped, desperately dragging his palms down his cheeks.

He wiped his hands down his face a few times before holding his palms out in front of his eyes, grunting in alarm as he saw faint smears of lipstick on his skin.

"And not just there, either," Botan added.

He lifted his eyes to her questioningly and she reached a hand out towards him, dragging the tip of one finger around his ear, sending a rush of desire through him that she had clearly not meant to.

"See?" she said, holding up her now pinkish-red fingertip.

Hiei was silently glad of the distraction and he began wiping his hands over his ears, his eyes wandering over Botan as he did so. She had a few kiss-marks on the collar of her coat, but otherwise she was fresh-faced and clean.

"I washed them off before I came through here," she told him.

He nodded his understanding, remembering then that Shuichi's upper body had been almost entirely covered with make-up stains, and a look down at his shirt and arms showed that he was little better himself.

"At least your shirt's black," Botan pointed out. "They would have been more noticeable on white. Look at the marks on my coat."

She pointed to the lipstick on her coat, which did look more vibrant against the white material.

"…You look like a proper little Lothario…"

Hiei paused, staring blankly at Botan as she giggled into her hand. It took him several seconds to remember what a "Lothario" actually was, and when he did finally remember, he was then unsure if he was insulted, sickened at the reference or amused that anyone would ever call him that name.

"Those ice maidens certainly liked you," she added. "I suppose you're like forbidden fruit to them."

"They called me the forbidden child when I was born," Hiei pointed out.

"And that was a bad thing, because it was their way of ostracising you from their society," Botan said. "But now it's a good thing, because it makes you sort of sexy, doesn't it?"

"…What?"

"Every girl loves the bad boy she's supposed to stay away from."

"…Every girl?"

"Yes. Trust me, I've been around enough girls and enough lost souls to know."

"…What about you?"

Botan started to answer something witty but her smile suddenly vanished and she stopped talking, her eyes meeting Hiei's and her face flushing. He smirked at her response, enjoying the moment all the more because it was not coming with that feeling of déjà vu, which obviously meant that other Hiei had never said anything so smooth to Botan in paradise.

"I'm not like all those other girls," she said slowly. "I've always preferred the gentle, intelligent, well-read, diplomatic sort of man."

Hiei's smirk vanished.

"The sort of heir to a kingdom type…" she added quietly, looking slightly remorseful.

Hiei almost reminded her that he was an heir to a kingdom too, but before he could speak the thought he realised it was an immature and pointless remark to make, and so he remained silent.

"I'm quite tired…" Botan said. "I think I'm going to try to get some sleep."

"You should go back to your seat on the train," Hiei suggested.

"No, it's alright, I think I'll stay here."

Hiei had assumed that she had been intending to return to her seat and had only suggested as much to save her the bother of having to say the words herself. He had no idea why she wanted to stay in the cold and cramped storage compartment with him, but he was also quite pleased to have her company – especially when the alternative was Shuichi – so he said no more on the matter.

Though he did start to wonder what she was really thinking when she began removing her coat.

He wanted to ask her what she was doing, but when the coat slid from her shoulders and revealed her bare arms and shoulders he decided that this was something else not to be questioned, and instead decided to simply be thankful for it. The silk vest she was wearing was relatively loose, but it was remarkably thin, and, being pure white, it was almost transparent when she moved and the material came in direct contact with her skin. The effect was almost hypnotic, and Hiei could not stop himself from staring, only awakening from his trance when she lay down on the ground and pulled her coat over herself like a blanket, hiding her body from the neck to halfway down her thighs.

"Fuck," he muttered.

"What?" she echoed.

"Nothing," he said.

She gave him a slightly critical look, but soon settled down again.

"Don't you want to get some sleep too?" she asked, tucking the fur collar of her coat under her head as a makeshift pillow.

"There's no room for both of us to lie down," he pointed out. "I can sleep sitting here."

"That's silly," she replied. "Come here and lie beside me."

Hiei tried to ignore his inner Shuichi, who was telling him that Botan had just asked him to sleep with her and that he should exploit that, instead maintaining an indifferent aura and shrugging slightly.

"There's not much room down there," he said as casually as he could manage. "If I lie down too, we'll be almost on top of each other."

"We can lie back to back," she suggested. "It will help keep us warm, too."

"…I don't really need the sleep, but if you need me to keep you warm…"

"Oh Hiei, stop being such a hard man and just lie down already."

Hiei twitched angrily, but Botan had closed her eyes and turned her back to him, so arguing further seemed pointless. He let her insult go unanswered and carefully shuffled down to lie behind her, keeping his back to her. There was even less space on the ground that he had anticipated, and he was forced to keep his back against hers, finding his upper body almost squashed between Botan and a crate.

"Do you want to come under my coat?" she asked him.

"No," he quickly answered, closing his eyes and blocking out the ideas that suggestion had immediately spawned in a more lecherous part of his mind.

"Well, goodnight Hiei," she said.

"Hn," he replied.

Hiei sighed slowly, and he quickly felt sleep taking him over. It had been a long day, he supposed, but this was certainly not how he had imagined it ending.

* * *

Hiei opened his eyes and was greeted by a sight that made him wonder if he was still asleep – and having a nightmare. He sometimes was troubled by nightmares, usually about the horrors of the operation he had undergone to have his jagan eye implanted, but those nightmares usually involved the vicious instruments Shigure had used, the bright lights of his operating theatre and the fearsome sight of Shigure himself.

This nightmare involved Shuichi Minamino's face positioned mere inches above his own, smiling down at him in arguably his most insolent expression yet.

"The train will be arriving at the station in about ten minutes," he whispered. "I thought perhaps I should swap places with Botan – I don't want her to get caught back here and land in any more trouble than she has already faced by tricking the SDF."

Apparently it was not a nightmare, Hiei thought darkly. Shuichi really was leaning over him, dressed in Kuwabara's suit jacket, with Hiei's coat wrapped around the lower half of his body like some sort of sarong and he was still wearing his long tabi socks and tatami sandals. He had at least cleaned the kiss-marks from his face, but that did little to salvage his sensibility.

"I think I should swap places with Botan," he said again.

"Fine," Hiei groaned.

He tried to sit up but stopped abruptly as his actions were met with resistance, and he realised then that he was lying flat on his back with Botan sprawled over his chest and one of his own arms wound around her, holding her in place. She was still fast asleep, and, ironically, the coat she had been using as a blanket had been pushed aside. Shuichi started to reach his hands out towards her and Hiei promptly reached up his free hand and slapped Shuichi's hands away again.

"I was just going to swap places with her," he explained.

Hiei narrowed his eyes at Shuichi, who stared blankly back at him for a little too long before smiling knowingly.

"Not literally, of course," he corrected himself. "I was just going to give Botan her ticket back and send her back to her seat. I wasn't going to literally swap places with her and lie on top of–"

"Stop!" Hiei warned him.

"Okay, I'll just wake her up–"

"Stop!"

"But I have to wake her up before the train–"

"No."

Shuichi arched his eyebrows expectantly, and although Hiei understood that he was trying to do a good thing for Botan's sake, he could not bring himself to comply with his request.

"We only have ten minutes until we arrive at the station, Hiei," Shuichi reminded him.

"So fuck off for five minutes and you can switch places with her then," Hiei replied.

"That seems… Pointless and hurried," Shuichi said.

"Don't care," Hiei said. "Get out."

Shuichi sighed quietly but did as he had asked. Hiei waited until he was sure that the idiot was gone before turning his attention fully to Botan. He started to reach a hand towards her head but stopped himself halfway there, a strange idea that it was unfair to wake her occurring to him. He had no idea why he ought to even care about such a thing, but he found himself concerned by it nonetheless. He pushed the thought from his mind as best he could and poked a finger at the top of Botan's head. She groaned and her hands gripped into his shirt. He poked her again and she snuggled closer to him and sighed, sleeping on obliviously.

He did not really want her to wake up and move, and apparently she did not want to wake up and move either: and the temptation to just remain that was strong, the only thing stopping Hiei from succumbing to it being the memory that Yukina was still a target for the Special Defence Force, and until he had ensured that she got on the airplane, there was no guarantee of her safety.

"Botan," he groaned, taking hold of her shoulders and gently shaking her.

"Mwhu?" she moaned.

"Wake up," he said. "The train is stopping soon, you have to get up."

She groaned but opened her eyes and started to pull herself up. Hiei let his hands slide from her shoulders, remaining where he was as he waited for her to finish pulling herself together. She yawned and tried to stretch her arms, realising then that one of them was still tangled in Hiei's, and she stared at it in surprise before moving her eyes to Hiei. She looked bewildered and for a moment he expected her to apologise or become embarrassed: but instead she started to look indignant.

"What sort of man are you to take advantage of a woman in her sleep like that?" she snapped.

"What?" he echoed.

Botan scrambled to her feet, grabbing up her coat and pulling it on. Hiei, still feeling more than a little confused, sat up and scratched his head, suppressing a groan when more petals fell out of his hair.

"That was very mean of you, Hiei!" Botan said indignantly. "I said we could sleep back to back, I never said that you could…"

Hiei slowly stood up.

"You were the one draped over me," he pointed out.

"I didn't have a choice in the matter!" she shot back.

Hiei was unsure what to think: she sounded angry, but she looked more distraught than infuriated.

"I didn't know what I was doing, I was asleep," she said quietly. "You… Make it sound like I couldn't keep my hands off of you, or something…"

Hiei snorted before he could stop himself, and even when Botan began glaring at him he could not stop the smirk that found its way onto his face.

"Oh, does that amuse you?" she asked, folding her arms over her chest and trying to look stern.

"I find it ironic," he replied.

"…What?"

Hiei saw no point in explaining himself: but it was ironic that Botan was offended by the idea of not being able to keep her hands off of him when she had been quite proud of that weakness in the paradise reality, where she had shamelessly put her hands on him at any chance she got.

"Is that a reference to some other reality you visited?" she asked.

"Maybe," he replied.

"Well that's not funny," she said. "That's not funny at all."

She squared her jaw and looked away from him for a moment before suddenly gasping and turning to face him again, looking pale and terrified.

"Oh my goodness!" she cried. "Did you… Did we…?"

"What?" he asked.

"In that reality where we were married, did you…" she tried again. "I mean did we… Did you take advantage of me?"

"No," Hiei replied

"Oh, that's alright then," Botan sighed.

"You took advantage of me," he said. "Many, many times…"

Botan's jaw slowly dropped and she looked like she had stopped breathing.

"How dare you?" she recovered. "You had no right to be looking at my naked body without my permission!"

"I had your permission," Hiei said.

"No you did not!"

"In that other reality I did."

"But not in this one!"

"…In this reality we've never–"

"I know that! But it's still not fair, because you've seen me naked and I've never seen you naked!"

"…Are you asking me to take off my clothes now?"

"No!"

Botan spun around to face away from Hiei, making several small noises of annoyance before turning back to face him again, one hand on her hip the other waggling a pointed finger at him.

"I was pregnant in that other reality!" she said.

"Yes, you were," he said.

"So then you can't have…" she began, her hands working through a series of elaborate and ambiguous gestures as she tried to find the words to say. "You can't have performed any acts of a lewd nature on me if I was pregnant."

"Why not?"

"What do you mean why not? Pregnant women do not have sex!"

"Yes they do. That's how they become pregnant women in the first place. I know you've lived a sheltered existence in spirit world, where the only men are eunuch ogres, a hairy giant and a whiny toddler whose testicles are still inside his–"

"Hiei, when a woman is pregnant, when she is actually carrying a child, she does not continue to have sex with her husband. Not until after the baby is born."

"…That doesn't make any sense. And it's not true. Not with you, anyway."

"That's disgusting! How could you do that to a pregnant woman?"

"You were carrying my child, you were my wife, and you instigated every encounter."

"Lies!"

Hiei sighed, almost wishing that Shuichi would hurry up and come back.

"I don't know what sort of weird reality you visited, but in this reality, I'm the sort of girl who doesn't just go around demanding sex all the time!" Botan said. "Especially not when I'm pregnant! I would never do something that foul!"

"You change your mind after you marry me," Hiei replied, as the memory occurred to him. "You said you didn't want to have sex until after we got married–"

"Well of course!" Botan interrupted him. "I'm not some… Floozy!"

"No, but you changed your mind after I asked you to marry me," Hiei calmly continued. "You jumped me there and then in the forest where the tree-house was built, and from then on, you couldn't keep your hands off of me."

"Well now I know that you're lying," Botan said, looking confident again. "First of all, I would never have sex outdoors with anyone, and secondly, I've known plenty of humans in my long existence, and I know that the spark of physical attraction goes after the initial… Flurry of activity."

"You told me that you thought you were lucky to have a lover like me because, even after eight years together, we still had the same passion of a new love."

Botan's face briefly changed into something close to pleasant surprise before she hid her feelings behind a scowl.

"That's impossible," she said.

"That was what you said," Hiei insisted.

"But… I thought that was impossible…" she said, her scowl weakening.

Hiei shook his head.

"…I've always… Wanted that…" she said slowly. "But… I thought that it was… Impossible…"

Hiei shook his head again.

"So…" she said. "We have the… The passion of a new love, after eight years together, we have a young son and another child on the way, and… Still we…?"

Hiei nodded his head, assuming that she was, in her own, fragmented way, asking if their relationship in paradise had been a passionate one despite eight years of marriage and the pressure of two children.

"I didn't think that was possible," she said.

"It worked for us," he replied.

"Well, that is impressive, but sex isn't everything," Botan said, trying to sound more blasé about it than she looked. "Is ours a romantic relationship?"

Hiei did not really know what that meant, since he had never considered the word "romance" outside of seeing it written on human greeting cards. Romance was not something inherent to the demon world culture, and no demon cared for it.

"It is, isn't it?" Botan asked, nodding as she spoke. "You had Kuwabara make that lovely house for me, and you must have done something wonderfully romantic to make me want to marry you in the first place."

"Sex and romance aren't the only component parts of a loving relationship."

Botan's eyebrows shot up and she stumbled back a step, which still only made her look a mere fraction as surprised as Hiei felt to hear himself say those words.

"That's…" she said. "That's actually… Very true. Love is about more than just… Good sex and romantic gestures…"

"It's so much more," Hiei said.

He was not sure where those thoughts had come from, but he did feel quite strongly about them. Botan nodded her head and looked like she might say something else, but before she could, Shuichi returned, looking as infuriatingly chipper as ever.

"There was a slight delay at the station," he said. "But we'll be arriving at the platform within the next five minutes, so you must go back to your seat, Botan."

He held out Botan's ticket towards her and she reached out to accept it, her hand missing her intended target several times as her eyes were still on Hiei and she was not really paying any attention to the proffered ticket. Shuichi took hold of her wrist in one hand and pushed the ticket into the palm of her hand with his other hand, closing her fist around it.

"On you go," he told her.

She nodded and started to leave, moving slowly and continually looking back over her shoulder at Hiei as she went. Shuichi ushered her out of the carriage and then picked his way back over to Hiei, giving him a sympathetic look as though he were looking at the last puppy in a shop window.

"Did you say something stupid to Botan again?" he asked.

Hiei's face dropped.

"Mind your own business," he snapped.

"I understand that you are eager to fix this part of your reality next my good friend," Shuichi said. "But might I suggest that you leave off chasing Botan for now. There are a few other areas you ought to concentrate on fixing first."

"Mini ensnaring demon!"

"…What?"

"Mini ensnaring demon. That's what you remind me of. All this time I knew you reminded me of something irritating from demon world. You're just like one of those mini ensnaring demons: always on my shoulder trying to bend my conscience to your liking."

Shuichi smiled as though he thought that Hiei had just complimented him.

"And you're still an idiot," Hiei added.

But still Shuichi smiled at him.

* * *

After some sneaking around – or rather, after Hiei carrying each of them on his back and running faster than would be detected by the human eyes watching the security gates – Hiei, Shuichi and Botan joined Kuwabara and Yukina in the departure lounge of the airport. Kuwabara had decided to start "burning a hole in his credit card" on the basis that he was about to start earning a lot of money, and so Hiei sat in the waiting area alone for some time as the others went shopping. When they eventually returned, Hiei was torn between feeling happy and feeling disgusted. Yukina was dressed in an outfit he had seen her wear in the paradise reality and she looked arguably even more delighted than she had in paradise, Botan was dressed in something plain but pretty – which was the style she had worn in the paradise reality – and Shuichi was wearing jeans that were at least two sizes too big for him and a shirt covered in blindingly brightly coloured squiggles.

They joined Hiei by where he was sat and Kuwabara proceeded to attempt to fit all of his purchases into a single, small suitcase, failing miserably in the process.

"You're doing it wrong," Botan told him.

"You should fold your clothes," Shuichi advised.

"Hn, you're wasting you time, he's hopeless at packing suitcases," Hiei said.

And as the words left his mouth, he realised why he had known as much in the paradise reality – again he had thought that other Hiei's memories had been leaking into his brain, but apparently it had all been a simple case of confusion over common elements between his own reality and paradise. Stupid common elements, like Kuwabara's inability to put things inside a suitcase efficiently and Shuichi's fondness for fake fox ears, but common elements nonetheless.

"I've almost got it," Kuwabara insisted. "Maybe if someone sits on it…"

Botan rolled her eyes and moved away from him, sitting down beside Hiei. He glanced at her, finding her looking out the nearby windows at the planes taxiing towards the runway. She then turned to the screen above their heads that was filled with flight numbers, gates numbers, destinations and departure times. She was looking strangely pensive, and something about the look on her face made Hiei a little apprehensive. She seemed to be planning something, but he could only guess at what.

"We only have the one train ticket back to Sarayashki," she said, her eyes still on the departures notices.

Hiei said nothing, instead continuing to watch her from the corner of his eye expectantly.

"And there are so many people here, and so much chaos, and so many different planes travelling to so many different parts of the living world," she continued. "I think there might be other parts of the living world where King Enma doesn't have jurisdiction…"

"Yes, there are," Hiei confirmed.

"And probably some of the airplanes out there are going to some of those places," Botan said casually.

"Probably," Hiei agreed.

"And with all these people and your jagan eye…"

Hiei turned more fully towards her, his curiosity rising.

"I doubt anyone would notice if we got on a plane too," she said quietly. "We could just… Go somewhere outwith King Enma's control. Shuichi can get back to Sarayashki on the train, and he could help convince Koenma that the girls were coerced into doing what they did, and that way we would be free to… We would just be free."

Botan turned to look directly at Hiei, her eyes filled with worry and expectation.

"…You're suggesting that we run away?" he asked her.

She nodded.

"Just you and me?" he asked.

She nodded again.

"Why?" he asked

"Because neither of us are happy with our lives here and now," she replied. "We're unhappy apart, but in that other reality we were very happy together, right? I mean… I'm not really sure about it, but maybe we should just… Give it a try. After all, what have we got to lose?"

Hiei looked up at the monitor displaying countless destinations around the living world and the relevant flights that would take them there.

"You want us to elope like forbidden lovers?" he asked, his eyes still on the screen.

Subconsciously he was looking for names he recognised. He had a vague awareness of some names of places in the living world that did not fall under King Enma's control, and he was almost certain that he could see a few that read "now boarding".

"I don't know that it will work out, but I think maybe we should try," Botan said.

Hiei smiled. He liked that idea. And the answer he gave her surprised them both.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei answers Botan's suggestion, Yukina and Kuwabara board their flight and set off to their new life – but not before Kuwabara asks a difficult favour of Hiei. Shuichi says something remarkably profound to Hiei and Keiko does something that really eats at Hiei's conscience. **Chapter 45: A Rare Opportunity**

 **A/N:** The next chapter is officially the end of part 4 of this fic – part 4 being the part where Hiei fixed the living world, freed Yukina and inadvertently revolutionised life in the ice village and turned Kuwabara and Yukina into (improved) versions of their paradise selves.

Part 5 deals mostly deals with the one thing I've mostly avoided writing about so far (done deliberately so that part 5 will be more unique).

Some angst ahead and way more madness – but since I got away with the ice maidens turning into hedonists, I think I can pull off some of the more absurd moments of part 5 of this fic.

Thanks for the reviews, they are always appreciated.

And finally, the link to the original storyboard for this fic is now posted at the top of my profile on this site. The current storyboard is 54 chapters long and I think that will take the overall story length to 410k words…


	45. A Rare Opportunity

**Recap:** Hiei and Botan talked and slept together (platonically!), the gang made it to the departure lounge of Haneda Airport, where Botan suggested to Hiei that they should catch a plane and just elope like forbidden lovers…

Oh come on, you just KNOW Hiei is going to feth this up!

 **Lo-ong chapter warning (seriously)  
Major angst warning…  
…Oh, who am I kidding?! Major cheese warning!**

* * *

 **Chapter 45: A Rare Opportunity**

"You want us to elope like forbidden lovers?" Hiei asked, his eyes still on the screen above his head.

Subconsciously he was looking for names he recognised on the list of destinations. He had a vague awareness of some names of places in the living world that did not fall under King Enma's control, and he was almost certain that he could see a few that read "now boarding".

"I don't know that it will work out, but I think maybe we should try," Botan said.

Hiei smiled. He liked that idea. And the answer he gave her surprised them both.

"No," he said.

"Wh-what?" she echoed.

"No," he repeated, turning to face her. "We can't run away like that."

"…I thought that you wanted… I thought you wanted to be with me?"

"Some things are just meant to be. Your friend, the guardian of fate, taught me that. You have to stay here and I have to return to demon world and finish something I started a long time ago."

"Oh… You'll come back and see me once you've finished your business in demon world though, right?"

"Probably not."

Hiei was not really sure what he was saying – it was not what he wanted to say, but at the same time, he felt like he was giving the appropriate response to Botan's request. He could not run away with her, he had a duty to return to demon world and carry out Mukuro's plan, but he did not want to tell her the details of that plan, and it seemed like the only other way to explain himself was to pretend that the thought of staying in the living world with her did not appeal to him in the slightest.

"I hate this world," he added. "Demon world is my home, it always has been. Once I return to the darkness, I won't ever come back here again, I have no need to."

Hiei avoided looking at Botan, though he was aware that she was rapidly becoming upset. He tried turning away from her, his eyes first landing on Yukina, who looked even more upset by his words than Botan had. He supposed she had probably interpreted his last remark to mean that he did not care about visiting her again in the living world, which was something else that was not true, but he did not want to tell Yukina the truth about his fate either. He turned his head again and found Kuwabara giving him a hard stare that was somewhere between disappointment and admonishment, neither of which he wanted to consider, so he turned again, and found himself looking at Shuichi, who was slowly shaking his head.

"You don't want me because I'm not her," Botan said quietly. "I'm not that other Botan you met… I'm the broken one, the one who didn't turn out perfectly, the one who messed up becoming human…"

"I never said any of that," Hiei pointed out.

"You didn't have to," she said, standing abruptly. "Your flight's boarding, Kuwabara, Yukina."

Kuwabara hesitated, but as Botan pointed at his still open suitcase he began frantically trying to secure it shut and Yukina started saying her goodbyes to Shuichi and Botan. Hiei stayed sat where he was, his eyes on the screen displaying the details of the departing flights. It was not that Botan's suggestion had not been tempting – because it had been extremely tempting and almost like another shot at a paradise to just run away from the misery that was his own life and start anew with Botan, returning eventually to live in the tree-house with Yukina nearby and happy – it was more that Hiei was feeling increasingly obliged to return to demon world. He still disagreed with Mukuro's plan, but countless visits to countless alternate realities had taught him that the war in demon world had only come about because Hitoshi had died, and that had only happened because Hiei had killed him, and so he knew that he was largely to blame for the mess his own world was in, and so it was up to him to take responsibility for that mess and do what he could to fix it.

Hiei almost wanted to smile at the irony of his dilemma when he realised that he was now strong enough to face what fate had planned for him, but he was still too cowardly to tell the others around him that his fate was to kill two dearly missed friends of theirs, both of whom were becoming conspicuous by their absence as old friends reunited and worked together once more. It was easier to make Botan think that he had grown tired of her and the living world, Hiei decided. She expected that of him. She knew that he was unreliable, hurtful and not to be trusted. And there was no point in making her fall in love with him in this reality, since it would only cause her more pain and suffering when she found out that he had died killing two of her best friends. There was not even the glimmer of hope that they could be together in another life, because Botan was destined to become a spirit and Koenma had sworn – the day Hiei let the rock monster kill Botan – that he would sentence Hiei to limbo upon his death.

Which, Hiei then realised, meant that he had barely a minute left to say an eternal farewell to his sister, and he had the train ride back to Sarayashki to bid his final farewell to Botan.

"Brother?"

Hiei turned to Yukina, who was standing in front of him, watching his worriedly. He stood up and let her put her arms around him, loosely returning her gesture. He was slightly surprised that she still wanted to hug him after what he had said about having no reason to return to the living world, but he supposed that was merely a reflection of her forgiving nature. He knew that she would be safe and well looked after with Kuwabara, and even after Kuwabara passed on – because, as a human, he would not live nearly as long as Yukina would – life in the ice village had changed so drastically Yukina would probably be able to return to her friends there and live out the rest of her days happily enough with them.

Reluctantly, Hiei inwardly admitted that Shuichi had been right again: this reality was better for Yukina than the paradise reality had been.

"I wish I could have had more time with you," Yukina said as she pulled back from Hiei. "I only just found my brother and now we have to go our separate ways again."

Hiei did not answer her and he was relieved to see that she did not seem to be expecting him to.

"Good luck with the remainder of your quest," she said.

Hiei moved his eyes to Shuichi, who was feigning innocence, which was a sure sign of his guilt: apparently he had opened his big mouth again and told Yukina that Hiei was on a "quest" to turn his own reality into paradise.

"Goodbye, Hiei," Yukina said.

Hiei nodded at her and she gave him one last smile before turning away and starting to leave.

"Good luck with your quest, Hiei," Kuwabara said, nodding at Hiei.

Hiei gave Shuichi another glare and again the redhead tried to look blameless.

"Make sure you get Urameshi and Kurama back here in one piece, okay?" Kuwabara added.

Hiei tried to stop his face from twisting, but he could feel the corners of his mouth twitching downwards despite his attempts to hold them straight. Botan and Shuichi wished Kuwabara good luck and he hurried off after Yukina. Hiei watched them until they reached a set of doors where they paused to wave one last time. Botan and Shuichi eagerly waved back and Hiei raised a hand in acknowledgement of their gesture.

"I'm going to miss those two."

Hiei turned to Shuichi, who was clutching a tissue by his face.

"Idiot," he growled at him.

All three then moved over to the windows, watching the plane until it had backed out of the terminal, sped the length of the runway and taken to the skies, Hiei only then feeling satisfied that Yukina was safe enough that he could return to demon world without the fear of her being caught; though even if she was caught and returned to the ice village, he imagined that the ice maidens would probably just take her straight back to the living world anyway.

"We should get going too," Botan said as the plane ascended into the clouds. "There's a train heading back to Sarayashki in about ten minutes, we should board it."

"I'll run," Hiei said.

"That would be unwise," Shuichi warned him.

"I can't believe I'm asking this, but why?" Hiei responded.

"I have the cell phone and Botan has the communicator," Shuichi replied. "Only we will know when the SDF have caught the girls. If you separate from us, we won't be able to warn you if the SDF return to the breach before you do. You should stay with us so that we can distract them if that happens and let you return to demon world unhindered."

"…Fine," Hiei reluctantly agreed.

"I think I'll probably sleep on the return journey, I'm still so tired," Botan said.

Hiei took that to be her diplomatic way of saying that she intended to pass the journey inside the passenger area of the train, and he would be stuck with Shuichi: so he decided that he would copy Botan's approach and sleep the journey back too.

* * *

Hiei hated rude awakenings, especially ones that involved spirit world, so when he was awoken abruptly during the train ride home by Shuichi frantically shaking him and repeating over and over "the SDF have caught Maya, Hiei, wake up" he did not awaken in a particularly good mood.

"What happened?" he groaned, sitting up. "And where are we? Are we close to Sarayashki?"

"No!" Shuichi replied. "We're still two hours away from Sarayashki! I was having lunch with Botan in the catering suite when the alarm sounded on her communicator! I called Keiko and she said Maya had been caught in a traffic jam and tried to flee on foot, but after that she heard no more, and then Maya pressed the alarm on her communicator!"

"Did they take her to spirit world?" Hiei asked. "And are they going to close the breach?"

"I don't know!"

Hiei contemplated slapping Shuichi to try to get some sense out of him, but he instead grabbed the wrist of his hand that was still clutching his cell phone.

"Call Keiko," Hiei said firmly. "Ask her what's happening. Ask her if the idiots that were chasing Maya are now chasing her and Shizuru or if they have disappeared."

"Right!" Shuichi said, hurriedly keying something into the phone.

Hiei released Shuichi's wrist, but Shuichi kept his hand in the air between them, leaving the phone on loudspeaker as it rang Keiko's number.

"Shuichi?" Keiko's voice eventually answered.

"Keiko, are you alright?" Shuichi asked her.

"Never mind about that!" Hiei snapped irritably. "Keiko, what happened to the soldiers that were chasing Maya?"

"I don't know!" Keiko replied. "I'm kinda… I'm a little bit busy right now."

"What are you doing?" Shuichi asked.

"Well, there are four SDF soldiers on this train with me," Keiko replied. "So I escaped them the only way I knew how: I climbed out a window and I'm on the roof of the carriage."

"What?" Shuichi yelped. "Keiko, that's very, very dangerous! You could get seriously hurt! Please be careful!"

"Yeah, the train went through a tunnel just before you called, and it was close," Keiko said.

Hiei's eyes doubled in size. It was clear from Keiko's voice that she was actually in a state of shock and denial about just how much danger she was actually in. She had always seemed like a sort of boring, straight-laced, ancillary character to him, so why she was suddenly risking her fragile human life to ensure his safety – after he had recently attempted to kill her in her own home, and previously tried to turn her into his mindless demon slave – was a mystery.

A mystery he had to know the answer to.

"We're returning to the breach now," he said. "We only need another two hours, why are you putting yourself at such great risk?"

"Because I trust you, Hiei."

That was the last answer he had been expecting from her. And it reminded him of Yusuke at the Gate of Betrayal in Maze Castle: he had put himself at risk because he had decided to trust Hiei despite them having been on opposing sides before that day.

"I trust you to fix this," Keiko continued. "Yusuke said he could always trust you in a difficult situation. He said that when things got really bad, you were the one who always saved the day. He said you weren't reliable for minor problems, but when a major problem arose, you would show up just in the nick of time to save everyone. He always said that about you Hiei."

"…Always?" Hiei muttered.

Even after the rock monster incident?

"And so I trust you now," Keiko said. "I trust you to get back to demon world and save Yusuke and Kurama from that war and bring them back home."

"I can't do that!" Hiei warned her.

"I know you can," she replied. "I trust you. You fixed Kuwabara and Yukina, you can fix Yusuke and Kurama too."

"No, I can't!"

Hiei waited for Keiko to say something but the phone remained infuriatingly silent.

"Keiko!" he yelled at it.

"Oh, I think I lost the signal…" Shuichi said, peering down at the phone. "We must be going through a tunnel ourselves."

"Fuck!"

Hiei stood up and pushed a hand through his hair angrily, all thoughts of lost sleep long gone from his mind. How could he possibly sleep now that he knew Maya had been captured, the Special Defence Force might be resealing the breach Kuwabara had made and Keiko was dicing with death on the understanding that he would repay her by "saving" Yusuke and Kurama?

"Call Keiko back," he said, turning back to Shuichi. "That last call might have made her lose her balance and die. I need to know that she's still alive."

"This next call might make her lose her balance and die," Shuichi pointed out.

"Fuck!"

Hiei knew that Shuichi was right, but that did not help his mounting anger any. The last thing he wanted or needed was to die feeling indebted to a human.

"Call Shizuru," he said.

"I can't," Shuichi replied.

"Can't or won't?" Hiei snapped.

"Well I can," Shuichi said. "But she's on her motorbike and she won't be able to answer if she's riding it, only if she's stopped somewhere. And if she's stopped, it's probably for a purpose like getting food, sleep or fuel, and my calling her will distract and stall her. If Keiko is stuck on the roof of a train with four SDF officers pursuing her, she will be caught within the hour, Shizuru is our last hope of keeping them off our backs, we can't slow her down with a pointless phone call."

Hiei wanted to argue, but again he knew that Shuichi was right, and arguing with him would be pointless.

"She raises an interesting point though, Hiei," Shuichi began. "What she said about trusting you to save Kurama and Yusuke–"

"You know I can't do that, and I'm not going to have this conversation with you!" Hiei cut him off.

"Kurama was with me for seven years after you were banned from this realm," Shuichi reminded him. "I know how he felt during that time. I know he was angry and felt betrayed when you let Botan die, but I also know that he came to forgive you for it. You were the first ally he trusted after Yomi, and you never betrayed him as badly as Yomi did. He forgave Yomi, and he forgave you too, Hiei. He wanted to make amends with you, but by then the political situation in demon world was out of control and it was too dangerous for someone in his position to approach Mukuro's headquarters, it would have been seen as espionage by the paranoid among Mukuro's ranks."

"You don't…" Hiei began. "You can't… You're not Kurama!"

"Not now, but I was once."

"It's not the same thing!"

"Kurama and Yusuke grew to miss you as a friend in the years you were apart. When their lives became troubled by the threat of war in demon world they wanted to reach out to you and make a pact with you not to kill each other. They never got that far, but I know that was their mentality when they returned to demon world. They never wanted to fight, Hiei, it was thrust upon them by fate. Maybe the war has changed them, but neither of them were ever mindless killers and neither of them would want to die on the battlefield of a war they did not start, want or even agree with. They deserve to survive this, and only you can make that happen."

"You don't know what you're talking about! It's not nearly that simple! You said yourself that Kurama couldn't approach me before the war and I can't approach him now that the war is on! The war has to end and this is the only way to make that happen!"

"It doesn't have to be!"

Hiei intended to start yelling at Shuichi for his idiocy, but when he shot to his feet looking enraged and almost vicious, Hiei was temporarily shocked into silence.

"You're a selfish bastard, Hiei," he said quietly. "Can't you see the power that you possess? You say that you don't believe in luck, but luck has befallen you lately, because you have been granted with knowledge, and knowledge is the most powerful weapon to be had. You don't need to end this war with violence Hiei, you have the power to end it more peacefully."

"You don't understand," Hiei growled back.

"No, my good friend, it is you who does not understand," Shuichi insisted. "The river of life only flows in one direction–"

"Not this again!"

"–for most of us, anyway. Most souls sail downstream their entire lives, following the natural flow fate has predetermined for them, blinded to any other direction but the one they are travelling in, knowing only the confines of that one little boat fate places them upon. But now you my good friend, on the other hand, were gifted the rare opportunity of turning that boat around and sailing in another direction entirely, for just a short time, to see life from an entirely new perspective. You were granted a gift only a very select few ever receive and how you choose to use what you have learned from that experience, Hiei, will shape the future of not only your own life, but everyone else's around you."

"I don't want to "sail on the river of life" any more. I hate sailing. I hate rivers. I hate water."

"…It's a metaphorical river."

"I know that!"

"Please don't rush into this blindly, Hiei. Please consider what you have learned lately and the power you had to make good things happen in this world. You can do so much more and I, like Keiko, believe that you have the power to save Kurama and Yusuke. Unlike Keiko, I don't trust you to do it, because you're quite abrupt and irrational, and saving them will require patience and rational thinking."

"You're a cheeky bastard."

"Perhaps I am, but I have your best interests at heart, my good friend."

"Hn."

Hiei turned around and hopped up onto a nearby crate. He was starting to leave, intending to find Botan in case she knew any more about Keiko's current predicament, but he stopped just short of the door as Shuichi suddenly landed on a box beside him and grabbed at his arm.

"Hiei, please," he said.

Hiei turned to look at him and saw only desperation in his eyes.

"Just think about it," he pleaded. "You're not the only one who would rather be living in "paradise", but you are the only one who can make "paradise" a reality for the rest of us."

Hiei vaguely remembered Shuichi saying the same thing to him once before, back when he was still in the hospital, but it had not seemed so pitiful or desperate as it did now. And it had barely registered with him before, this time it was causing that strange tugging pain in his chest that he had suffered a few times over the last few weeks when people had said or done something strange around him.

"I'm going to find Botan," he said, pulling his arm from Shuichi's grasp. "Come with me or don't: I don't care."

Hiei hurried on then without bothering to wait and see if Shuichi did intend to follow him. He quickly made his way up the length of the train to the first class carriages and there he began barging into every booth he passed, ignoring the complaints from the humans inside them and continuing his invasion until he located the one Botan was sat in.

"Hiei!" she gasped as he stumbled into the booth.

She was alone, which he was glad of, and she looked as though she had been crying.

"Keiko's in trouble," Hiei told her.

"We all are," she quietly replied.

Hiei slowly sat down opposite her, his eyes falling to the spirit world communication mirror she was cradling in her trembling hands.

"At least Yukina and Kuwabara are safe," she added. "I'm not so sure the rest of us will be that lucky. The SDF have caught Maya."

"I know," Hiei replied.

"Were you watching with your jagan eye?"

Hiei paused for long enough to silently berate himself for not thinking to use his third eye to check on Keiko before then.

"Hopefully the SDF will redirect themselves and still pursue the other two signals," Botan continued. "And then we can–"

She stopped short as the communicator in her hand let out a series of short beeps, causing her to jerk in her seat in surprise.

"They've caught Keiko," Hiei said.

Botan frowned down at the device before shaking her head.

"They've caught Shizuru," she said.

"Fuck!" Hiei snarled.

That was worse. Of the three girls playing decoy, Shizuru was the smartest and, onboard her motorbike, the one who could more easily evade capture. Keiko had said that she had four officers pursuing her, it would only be a matter of time before they caught her, and as soon as that happened, the entire mission would be a bust: the Special Defence Force would regroup and reseal the breach in the Kakai Barrier, they would hunt down Hiei and they would probably arrest Botan for deceiving them.

"How long until this train gets us to where we need to be?" Hiei asked Botan.

"About an hour and fifty minutes, I think," she replied. "Do you think Keiko can hold off the SDF for that long on her own?"

Hiei closed his eyes and focused his jagan eye on finding Keiko. Although he did not want her to be captured, he was actually a little bit concerned that she had not yet been caught, as it was possibly a sign that she had fallen from the roof of the train and died – and Keiko's death was the last thing he wanted to have on his conscience. However he soon located her, dressed entirely in black, with a black cloak pulled up over her head in what he supposed was her attempt to make herself look like him from a distance. She was back inside the train, picking her way through a carriage and looking about herself nervously. He searched around a little and found one Special Defence Force soldier on the roof of the train, one searching between the outside of the carriages and two searching the inside of the train. The officer on the roof of the train had a demon compass and he was slowly moving in the same direction as Keiko.

She was alive, but it was doubtful that she would evade capture for longer than five minutes, which meant chaos for Hiei when he got back to the breach in the barrier.

Hiei was about to end his viewing but stopped short, maintaining the link as Keiko clambered out the back of the last carriage of the train. She looked a little bit surprised to be at the end of the train, but she only paused there long enough to look upwards. The soldier on the roof of the carriage was not within her line of sight but she seemed to know that he was there as she looked slightly panicked before doing something that made Hiei curse in surprise: she leapt from the still-moving train.

Keiko hit the ground and rolled over a few times before scrambling to her feet and running off, barely avoiding being blasted by a shot from the soldier on the roof of the train. He leapt down after her as she reached a high wire fence containing the railway lines from the town beyond, which she began trying to climb over. By the time she had managed to scale the fence, pick her way over the spiked top which snared her clothing and tore at the skin on her legs and then jump down at the other side, the Special Defence Force soldier was upon her. She grabbed up a nearby bag of garbage and threw it at him, taking advantage of his confusion to kick over bicycles and an advertising stand to block his path and then she raced off, trying to take the most complicated path she possibly could to stay ahead of him.

"What the fuck is she doing?" Hiei raged, terminating his link to her actions and opening his eyes.

"What's wrong?" Shuichi asked, stepping into the booth with Hiei and Botan.

"Keiko!" Hiei replied. "She's… She's putting herself in great danger and acting like an idiot… Now that they know the other two signals were false alarms, those SDF bastards are trying to shoot her down because they think she's me! She should just surrender! They could kill her!"

"Oh dear, this is all may fault!" Botan wailed. "It was my idea that she should do what she's doing, if she dies it will be my fault!"

"Keiko agreed to be a part of this," Shuichi assured her. "She knew the dangers before she got into the situation she is now in."

"But I made her do it!" Botan cried. "I convinced her that we should help Hiei, I insisted that she lure the SDF away from us… Each member of the SDF is stronger than most A class demons, can you imagine what they might do to her?"

"I wouldn't worry about that," Shuichi said. "If they are that powerful, one blast from them will kill Keiko instantly. She won't suffer."

"It's time for you to stop talking again," Hiei growled, glaring threateningly at Shuichi.

"Keiko wanted to do this," he replied. "She knows exactly how much danger she is in. She knows that she's risking her life and she knows that she could end up in spirit world prison. But she's not giving up on us. We shouldn't give up on her. Or each other. Or ourselves. Hiei."

Shuichi arched his eyebrows and Hiei realised that he was not really talking about Keiko's courage to reassure Botan so much as he was using Keiko's courage to make Hiei feel guilty about killing Kurama and Yusuke. Hiei could not argue with him, since doing so would mean admitting to Botan what his true intentions were when he returned to demon world, and so he kept quiet.

"What are we going to do?" Botan asked, looking up at Shuichi.

"Hn, why are you asking that idiot?" Hiei snorted.

"We have to pray for Keiko," Shuichi answered Botan. "And we have to prepare ourselves for a battle when we get back to Sarayashki."

"A battle?" Botan echoed.

"Yes, a battle," Shuichi confirmed. "It's likely that some of the SDF officers are already trying to seal the breach in the barrier, and we will have to face that obstacle when we get there."

Hiei turned away before Botan could look him in the eye. Things had not exactly gone according to their plans in the ice village, but no amount of Shuichi's idiocy was going to get them out of this mess. Hiei just hoped that Koenma was lenient towards Botan and the girls when they were brought before him for setencing.

* * *

Hiei, Botan and Shuichi had to take a very long and stalled route from the train station back to the breach, as there had been a single Special Defence Force officer waiting on the platform when their train had arrived at its destination. They had avoided being seen so far, but everywhere they went they saw at least one solider clad in grey and blue, their coverage of the city so complete that Hiei could not even risk breaking away from the group to run ahead to the breach alone.

Keiko had been caught barely ten minutes before the train had arrived back in Sarayashki. Hiei had been watching her at the time and had seen what had happened: she had fought and struggled and kicked and slapped her way out their grasp a few times, even after they had already realised that she was not Hiei, her determination never fading. Eventually however, they had managed to restrain her and she had been taken away. An hour after sneakily disembarking the train, Hiei, Botan and Shuichi were within sight of the cave they had been aiming for, and Hiei performed a quick check of the inside with his trusty third eye, finding two Special Defence Force soldiers already in there inspecting the breach Kuwabara had created in the Kakai Barrier the day before, and the captain of the Special Defence Force himself was there, pacing about and looking even more menacing than usual.

Hiei started to move but stopped as Shuichi grabbed at his arm.

"What?" he hissed, turning to look back over his shoulder at him.

"Listen to me very carefully, Hiei," Shuichi sternly replied. "No matter what happens in there, you have to get back to demon world."

"I know that, idiot!" Hiei snapped, yanking his arm from Shuichi's hold.

"I-I think I understand," Botan said. "Shuichi means that you have to let us deal with the SDF, Hiei."

Hiei pulled a face at her before turning to Shuichi, who was nodding solemnly.

"Don't worry about us, my good friend," he said. "We will hold them back as best we can, but you have to get back to demon world and save Kurama and Yusuke."

Hiei growled and bared his teeth in frustration: did that idiot never listen? There was no possible way to "save Kurama and Yusuke"!

"Yukina bravely stood up to the elders in the ice village, Keiko bravely held back the SDF for as long as she could, and now it's our turn to do our part," Botan said.

"You should know better than anyone how foolish that is!" Hiei scolded her. "They will kill you if you try to hinder them!"

"A gamble we will gladly take," Shuichi calmly replied.

Hiei balked as he saw Botan nod in agreement. She looked terrified and bewildered, but she was clearly trying to look and act as brave as Keiko had been that day.

"The girls were running from the SDF for a full day," Botan added. "Keiko must have been on the go for more than 30 hours without stopping. If she can make that kind of sacrifice, I can certainly do my best to appease the SDF now."

"To "appease" the SDF?" Hiei asked.

"Yes," she replied. "Words, just like weapons, are powerful when wielded correctly in battle."

Hiei screwed up his face.

"That means we're going to use our brains and talk our way out of trouble," Shuichi explained. "Instead of waving a sword around and swearing a lot like you do."

Hiei gave Shuichi a flat look, but the human appeared not to be bothered by it.

"We should keep moving," Botan suggested. "Before the other officers figure out that we're here and they regroup."

Hiei nodded and together the trio dashed to the cave entrance and into the darkness beyond. The light around them quickly become swallowed up, and it became harder to walk without tripping on the rocky, uneven cave floor. Hiei was, surprisingly, the first to stub his toe, at which he hissed out a curse. As he regained his balance he felt a hand take hold of one of his hands, and at first he smiled, the feeling of soft fingers against his telling him that Botan had decided to become friendly with him again: but when he closed his own fingers around the hand in his, he realised that it was far too big to be Botan's and he turned his head sharply, barely seeing Shuichi at his side.

"We should hold hands in case one of us trips over," Shuichi said.

"I don't want to hold hands with you!" Hiei spat.

He peered past Shuichi and saw that his other hand was being held by Botan – the sneaky bastard had put himself between Hiei and Botan.

"It's safer this way," Botan whispered.

Hiei sighed and tugged his hand from Shuichi's, walking on alone for a few steps before tripping and stumbling a little.

"See?" Shuichi said.

Hiei grumbled out a few choice insults against the fool as they continued on. Hiei still refused to hold Shuichi's hand, but he did walk with more care from then on to avoid any more mishaps. It was difficult for him to concentrate on the ground because his thoughts were consumed by just three things: what lay ahead of them by the portal to demon world, what lay ahead of him in demon world itself and how long he had left before he would be brought before Koenma for final judgement in the afterlife. He had decided that, since Koenma was going to sentence him to 10,000 years of suffering in limbo anyway, he was going to punch the smarmy little bastard in the face while he could.

And that thought reminded Hiei of what Botan had said before they had entered the cave: "words, just like weapons, are powerful when wielded correctly in battle". It was the sort of thing that ugly bastard Hitoshi would have said. It was the sort of thing that whiny toddler Koenma would have said. They were the words of a true diplomat, someone who actually believed that talking could solve problems better than violence could.

It was strange how Yukina and that ice maiden Rui had overthrown the elders with only two casualties. They had spoken a lot and achieved more with their words than with their actions, because every time they had said something provocative, more of the ice maidens had joined their cause and agreed to finding a better way of life.

"A better way of life is easily within our grasp with a little application and a lot of teamwork and cooperation. We have the raw materials, we have the skills and we have the resources: and so let us build the foundations of paradise, and let us start with a simple act of goodwill."

Hiei hesitated slightly as he heard the end part of Hitoshi's ridiculously grandiose anti-war speech echo around his mind, and he wondered why it was recurring to him now – how inappropriate.

Hiei moved on, rejoining Botan and Shuichi as they ducked down behind a rock overlooking the end of the cave and the glowing portal to demon world. Just as Hiei had already seen, there were two soldiers studying the breach and their leader was pacing about behind them. Hiei thought that his best option was to launch himself at the portal at top speed and leap through it before they could even register that he was in the cave with them, but he did not like the idea of just abandoning Botan and Shuichi. He thought that he should probably dismiss them and hope that they would make it back outside and into hiding without being spotted by any more pesky Special Defence Force soldiers, and so he beckoned for them to come closer, intending to tell them as much.

"I'm going to go over there and distract them," Botan said.

"What?" Hiei hissed.

"Shuichi, you're coming with me," she said to him. "They know what you are – they know that Kurama's soul once resided in your body and that since he left you, you have… Lost some of your… They know that you were diagnosed with severe schizophrenia, and I'm going to tell them that I found you hanging about here and I was worried it was a sign of something terrible. I need you to act crazy and say lots of stupid things. Maybe dance about a bit. Between us we'll confuse and disorient them until Hiei has managed to sneak through the portal. Do you think you can do it?"

"Hn, stupid question," Hiei answered before Shuichi could even open his mouth. "He doesn't need to act crazy, he is crazy. And saying lots of stupid things and dancing about are his two favourite hobbies."

"I'll miss you too, my good friend," Shuichi said, patting him on the shoulder. "But I know you'll be back to see us again soon."

"Hiei isn't coming back," Botan corrected him. "He said he hates it here. And… Well I suppose that's fine."

Hiei stared into Botan's eyes, and for a long time he thought about just grabbing her into his arms and running away with her as she had suggested. The temptation was almost too much to bear, but the sight of Shuichi sobered him by reminding him of Kurama and his duties to demon world and Mukuro.

"Be careful," he advised her instead.

She nodded and then ushered Shuichi to go out ahead of her. She gave Hiei one last solemn nod before creeping out from behind the rock. Hiei watched from his concealed position, waiting for his chance to dash through the portal. Shuichi stumbled into the middle of the open cavern and all three officers immediately stopped what they had been doing and turned their attention to him. Shuichi started to say something about the uniforms the soldiers were wearing, but before he could finish the captain stomped up to him and punched him hard in the face, causing him to stagger back several steps.

"Isn't that Kurama?" one of the other soldiers asked.

"No, wait!" Botan cried, hurrying over to Shuichi's side. "This is Shuichi Minamino, not Kurama! He's just a human from this world! He's a little confused – Kurama's soul used to reside in his body, and since Kurama left him, he's been a little… Unstable…"

"Miss Botan," the captain said, bowing to Botan. "There is a tear in the Kakai Barrier by this portal, it's not safe for you to be here. If that man really is innocent, please take him far from this place."

"Oh, I've been trying to take him home," Botan said. "But he can be quite troublesome. He's an innocent, please don't hurt him, but can you help me escort him back home?"

"We're quite busy here, Miss Botan," the captain replied. "We've been led on wild goose chase since this breach was opened."

Hiei started to panic at the captain's words: the "wild goose chase" he was referring to had started with the compass Botan had given him, after all. Botan was either not in the least put out or else she was keeping the concern from her face with the practised ease of a skilled dissembler: and if the latter was the case, Hiei had just found another reason to respect her.

"We caught three human girls pretending to be that stunted fire demon Hiei," the captain continued.

Hiei growled quietly, vowing to kill the bastard some day for that insult – before remembering that he would not live to fulfil that promise.

"Oh dear," Botan said casually. "Who would do such a thing?"

"Keiko Yukimura, Shizuru Kuwabara and Maya Kitajima," one of the soldiers mechanically replied. "Yukimura and Kuwabara were once friends of yours, weren't they?"

"Yes," Botan replied, almost too calmly for Hiei's liking. "Are you sure they were pretending to be Hiei? That doesn't seem like something that they would do."

"Yes, absolutely," the captain said. "We took this from Kitajima."

He removed a communication mirror from his shirt pocket and Botan nodded, giving it a cursory glance as though it was insignificant.

"She had it set up on a closed communication link with only three other communicators," the captain continued. "Kuwabara had one and Yukimura had another but we don't know where the third one is."

He pushed a button on the communicator and a frantic beeping sound started radiating from the pocket of Botan's dress. The captain slowly replaced the communication mirror to his pocket.

"Step away from the human please, Miss Botan," he said calmly.

The other two officers stepped forwards and for the first time since the start of their ruse, Hiei saw both Botan and Shuichi start to look worried. After getting so close to his goal – and before the rest of the spirit world Special Defence Force arrived and really complicated the situation – Hiei decided to intervene. He had nothing to lose and he could not let Botan suffer to allow him to make another cowardly getaway.

"Touch either of them and I'll kill you all," he announced, drawing out his sword and stepping out from his hiding place.

All three soldiers turned to Hiei and he saw Botan frantically shaking her head beyond them.

"I thought we agreed that I wasn't going to see you in the living world again, Hiei," the captain said.

"Wait!" Shuichi said, stumbling forwards and placing himself between Hiei and the soldiers. "There is an opening to demon world right behind you, why not just let Hiei pass through it and close it behind him. There is no need for this confrontation to turn into a violent one or–"

Shuichi yelped out in pain and shock as the captain punched him in the gut with a glowing fist. It was clearly a power shot, and it left Shuichi on the ground struggling for air, a small spattering of red around his mouth from where he had coughed up blood. Shuichi, without Kurama's soul in his body, was not physically able to withstand an attack from a being as powerful as the captain of the Special Defence Force, and Hiei was sure that the bastards from spirit world knew as much, making their heavy-handed tactics all the more detestable.

"Restrain the girl," the captain said.

The one female officer of the trio marched over to Botan and grabbed one of her arms, twisting it up her back until she cried out in pain.

"Let her go!" Hiei yelled.

"That's Lord Koenma's decision to make," the captain answered him.

"Just go, Hiei!" Botan cried. "Please! Just go back to demon world! Send Yusuke and Kurama back, they'll be able to patch things over with Koenma! He will forgive me if they back me up!"

Hiei gulped awkwardly: was Botan going to be sentenced to something horrible now in the absence of her friends to plea her case?

"Get… Get out of here!" Shuichi wheezed, dragging himself up onto his elbows. "Go, Hiei! Fix things in demon world and… I'll fix things here!"

Shuichi barely looked fit to stand on his own two feet let alone fix the rapidly worsening situation they were suddenly submerged in.

"Please Hiei," Botan said faintly. "Please… Just go and… Get Yusuke and Kurama back…"

Hiei returned his sword to its sheath and the soldiers in front of him relaxed slightly, apparently assuming that he was about to surrender.

"You'd better look after her," he warned Shuichi. "If you don't, I'll haunt you until the day you die!"

Shuichi nodded his understanding and Hiei took one last look at Botan, squirming in the hold of the soldier behind her. She was clearly in pain, but there was still a determination in her eyes that said she believed in him. It was unfortunate that he was going to have to disappoint her, but he drew some small consolation from the fact that he would not live to see that disappointment in her beautiful eyes. He had intended to leave with the hope that she would hate him and blame him for what he was about to do, but as he looked at her his mind began to wander from its primary objectives, and his thoughts shortly began to form words.

"I have to say goodbye to you," he said, keeping his eyes on hers. "But just because we won't ever meet again, in this life or the next, don't think it doesn't mean that I never cared about you. Sometimes saying goodbye is… Just another way of saying I love you."

Botan gasped softly and even the Special Defence Force soldiers seemed to forget their ire momentarily. Hiei sighed and looked down at the ground for a moment as that odd tugging sensation in his chest became almost overwhelming. He took a few deep breaths and lifted his head again, fighting against it as best he could, determined to finish speaking the words that were swimming around his mind.

"I never really had you," he said as his eyes once more met Botan's. "Not in that other reality or this one, it was always an illusion, and I can see that now. But even though I never actually had you, I don't want to lose you. Sometimes… Sometimes holding you close took my breath away, and I'm sorry I could never find the right words to say to you. It's so easy for the pathetic fools in this world to talk about love, but it's so hard to recognise love, even when you hold it in your hands, it can slip through your fingers like water before you've truly had the chance to appreciate it for all that it is… I never knew what love was, and if I do know now, it's because of you."

Hiei paused again, thumping a fist softly against the point of pain in his chest, but unfortunately doing nothing to ease it.

"There's a place inside of me where your fingertips still rest, you kisses still linger and your sweet whispers still softly echo," he continued. "And in that place, you will forever be a part of me. I don't expect to face a pleasant fate – the evils and wrongs I've done ensured my place in the afterlife long ago – but it doesn't matter, because I can't imagine nirvana being any greater than being loved by you. And I'm happy to trade the rest of eternity for the brief glimpse I got of that wonder…"

Hiei looked down at the ground for a moment, realising then that his mind had gone blank and he had satisfied whatever strange urge it was that had driven him to say what he had.

"I have to walk the road of atonement to its conclusion," he said, lifting his head again. "Goodbye."

And without further ado, Hiei dodged past the soldiers blocking his path and leapt up through the portal, passing through the tear in the Kakai Barrier and landing back in the darkness of demon world.

He was standing in a jungle of weeds on what had once been the well-worn border patrol road, facing Mukuro's fortress, which had been severely damaged since his last visit, and the front yard was littered with dead and rotting corpses.

The situation there was even worse than he had expected it to be.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** The situation in demon world is dire indeed, and Hiei promptly sets about enacting Mukuro's plan to end the war and salvage what little is left of her kingdom. And just when Hiei thinks things can't possibly get any worse, he learns that a key figure in demon world has recently been killed in the war, and this news, along with an unexpected hitch in his plans, take him to the last place he ever expected to find himself – doing the last thing he ever expected himself to do. **Chapter 46: Denizens of Demon World**


	46. Denizens of Demon World

**Cue the beginning to part 5 of this fic… This is the part where everything comes together – good and bad.**

 **Recap:** Keiko bravely fought off the SDF for as long as she could, Shuichi begged Hiei not to rush into anything upon his return to demon world and unfortunately the SDF had found the tear in the Kakai Barrier before Hiei arrived there, leading to a stand-off between Hiei and three members of the SDF. Hiei managed to pass them and return to demon world, but not before (finally) telling Botan that he loves her, and when he arrived back in his own world, he found the situation there to be incredibly bleak.

* * *

 **Chapter 46: Denizens of Demon World**

Hiei drew out his sword and slashed at the tangle of shrubbery around him. A gust of wind whistled past him, blasting him with the scents of stale blood and rotting flesh. A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance and then all was unnaturally silent once more. Hiei started forwards, cutting himself a path as he walked, his eyes flicking between his task of cutting back the plants blocking his route and the desolate scene ahead of him. The perimeter walls around Mukuro's fortress had been reduced to rubble, and there were various body parts of various demons impaled on some of the remaining metal struts that had formed the base of the walls. The fortress itself had suffered varying amounts of damage, the main tower being the only part that was still in tact: and Hiei knew that was because the entire building has been designed so that the central tower could be isolated from the remainder of the building in an emergency, and it had been built of impenetrable materials and was protected by Mukuro's own demon energy.

It looked as though something had ravaged the entire fortress during Hiei's absence. He could only guess at what: Yusuke's men, Kurama's demon plants or simply refugees and defectors of the war taking advantage of the unprotected fortress to raid it for food and supplies. Whatever it was, it had either long gone or else taken control of the central tower and completely overthrown Mukuro. Hiei doubted that anyone was more powerful than Mukuro in demon world – Raizen had once been the strongest in demon world, and Yomi was a worthy adversary, but Hiei was sure that Mukuro was the most powerful demon alive – and so it was doubtful that she had been deposed of. Doubtful, but not impossible, in the dystopia of his life, he thought miserably.

As he reached the yard, Hiei started to recognise some of the fallen demons around him: some of them were amongst Mukuro's top soldiers, but most of them were the trainees she had been rigorously working with to try to prepare them for frontline activity in the war. He wondered then how deeply the damage to the fortress ran – if it went into the underground section, the healing chambers would all be destroyed too. It was arguable if that even mattered though. Hiei had been thinking that the tanks would be needed for any demons returning wounded from the conflict, but if the entire kingdom had been vanquished, it would not matter whether or not the central headquarters had the facilities to heal the wounded.

Hiei stopped at the door to the tower, recognising that it was sealed shut and entering would not be a simple or even a safe thing to do. He looked up the length of the tower and saw no evident signs of life, but apparently someone had sensed or seen his approach, because as he lowered his eyes to the door again it opened. It could be a trap, he thought, but he decided to take the chance anyway and he stepped inside, tensing when the door promptly banged shut behind him.

"Hiei," a familiar voice greeted him.

He turned his head and saw one of Mukuro's elite soldiers bolting the door.

"I don't know where the hell you've been this last month," he said. "But I hope you had fun. Mukuro's waiting for you in her office… She's been there since the day you left."

Hiei nodded and walked on, moving towards the stairwell that led up to Mukuro's office. As he went he wondered why Mukuro had not done more to protect her own home or why she had not joined the fighting long ago – but he supposed that she had some political reason for that, probably something about how leaders should not be seen to be slaughtering the working class of an opposing kingdom. He actually thought that the exact answer might be lurking somewhere in the murky depths of his own mind, an interpretation of it existing there that was not his own, rather the result of those strangely political thoughts that sometimes occurred to him lately. He tried to ignore it as best he could and pressed on, scaling the stairs at a pace that would make him growl impatiently to witness in someone else. He supposed that he was "dragging his heels" – almost literally – out of reluctance. He was still hoping that he would not have to go through with Mukuro's plan, but he knew that she would immediately dispatch him to complete it, and that meant that he only had the sparse few minutes it would take him to reach her office to formulate an alternate plan.

Shuichi always had a plan. He always knew how to weasel his way out of a bad situation. But he had not offered up any ideas to Hiei, instead simply begging him not to kill Kurama. That could only mean that Shuichi had no plan, Hiei decided, and if that was the case, then there was probably no plan to be had. He wondered if Botan or Kuwabara would have been able to think of a better way of handling the problem: Kuwabara was always against needless killing and Botan had certainly proven herself to be cunning and more than able to think on her feet in a dire situation.

Hiei wondered how that other reality had turned out – the reality that had doubtlessly now been born from the moment he had to choose between running away with Botan and facing the fate he now did.

Hiei paused outside the door to Mukuro's office and drew in a deep breath, holding it in for several seconds before gently sighing it out again and pushing open the door without knocking – not that he ever did knock before entering his boss's office. Inside he found Mukuro hunched over her desk, another map filled with miniature figures laid out before her. Her eyes looked at Hiei as he entered, but otherwise she did not acknowledge his intrusion.

"I'm back," he said, feeling the need to initiate conversation somehow.

"So I see," she quietly replied. "Things didn't work out with your ferry girl wife then?"

Hiei paused, his immediate reaction to her question being that she must have known that she had sent him back to the paradise reality before she had asked such a question, and if she had known he was there, was that because she had deliberately sent him there? Did she, despite her previous claims to the contrary, actually know how to control where she sent him with her Dividing Realities attack? Could she send him back to paradise again with just one attempt?

Did it really matter any more?

"No," he said. "I fucked it up."

Mukuro slowly sat up straight, clearly trying not to look surprised and yet failing miserably.

"In both realities," Hiei added. "In the good reality and in this one."

"Oh," she said. "I thought you might… Oh…"

She placed her hands on the desk and pushed herself to her feet. She looked quite pathetic, Hiei thought to himself: she had clearly lost weight and she looked like she had been sat poring over strategy maps for days without stopping to wash, change her clothes or even to eat.

"I'm sorry Hiei."

Hiei tilted his head, unable to hide his confusion. He had been expecting her to yell at him or to throw him through a wall, not apologise and sound quite genuine about it.

"You know that I've always taken an active interest in human world and spirit world cultures," she continued. "The humans quite like proverbs, and one of their strange little sayings springs to mind when I look at you now: "it's better to have loved and lost than to never love at all". But for some of us that's not always the case, is it Hiei? I think for a heart like yours, a mind like yours, it would have been easier if you'd never known of your wife and son than to have them and to lose them."

"You said that to me already," Hiei pointed out.

Mukuro frowned at him and Hiei himself had to stop and think exactly when she had said those words to him. Had it been in another reality?

"Right," Mukuro eventually said. "I just wanted to share that with you. I understand your fear and hatred of rejection by someone you love, and obviously I was wrong about your feelings for that girl, obviously you actually did fall in love with her… Though I still don't really understand why…"

"I never understood or experienced true happiness before I let her into my life," Hiei replied. "And I think I know now why that is: my happiness depends entirely on hers."

Mukuro's face again betrayed her surprise and again she tried, unsuccessfully, to hide it.

"That's very deep," she sighed. "She must have been something very special to reach your heart."

Hiei did not bother answering her. In another life – another reality – this would have been the perfect opening to drive home the point to Mukuro that Botan was important to him. This would have been his chance to do the one thing that other Hiei had failed at: to stand up to Mukuro and prove to her that Botan was not the thoughtless and worthless spirit world reject that she thought she was rather than to rely on Botan doing something clever to win Mukuro's approval. But the time for talking had ended long ago, and Hiei really just wanted to face his fate as quickly as possible.

"Yusuke and Kurama are still the driving force behind the fighting," Mukuro said carefully after a prolonged silence had passed between them. "And I still believe that the plan I presented to you before I sent you to another reality is the only way to get some control over the madness that has swept across this world."

Hiei nodded.

"I never wanted to have to do this," she added. "This was always my last resort. I don't even have much of a kingdom left to rebuild, but I won't forget my duties to what and who remains. Hiei, I…"

Mukuro slowly crossed the room towards Hiei and put her hands on his shoulders.

"I thought that we had a great future here," she said carefully. "I knew that I would never have children myself, and I was always glad to take you as my heir. I… I'll miss you."

She moved her real hand to the top of his head, gently rubbing his hair between her fingers.

"I wish there was another way," she said. "But I'm all out of good ideas."

"Hn, me too," Hiei replied, smiling wryly.

He thought that Mukuro was going to say something else, but instead she sighed and then pulled him into an awkward hug. He did not return her gesture – because he felt that she did not actually want him to – instead letting her hold onto him as long as she needed to. He felt slightly better about carrying out her plan knowing that she was so upset by it, because the egotistical part of him had thought that she was a cold-hearted bitch who just wanted him dead because he was getting too close to being her biggest rival in strength, and he had always thought that their relationship was a little deeper than that.

"I can't come with you," she said, releasing him a little abruptly. "I need to stay here and protect the… Tower…"

"Fine," Hiei said. "Tell me where I need to be."

"I've arranged an escort to take you there," Mukuro replied.

"I don't need an "escort"," he snorted.

"Just go with them, Hiei. They'll take you as close as they can, after that you're on your own."

"Fine."

Mukuro walked over to a window at one side of the room and Hiei followed her, peering out of it to see a slightly worn old border patrol vehicle waiting in the back yard of the fortress.

"Was it the utopia?" Mukuro asked as they looked down at the awaiting transport. "I figured out that there was a utopia and a dystopia, during my experiments with the Dividing Realities. The reality you liked so much, was it the utopia of your life?"

"You said it wasn't, but it was close," Hiei replied. "You also said that his was the dystopia of my life."

Hiei turned to Mukuro who said no more and kept her face blank – but her lack of response was all the response he needed to confirm that even she knew they were in a pretty pathetic reality.

"I don't understand why it wasn't the utopia," he said. "Apart from that one small thing about Yukina's regret, everything else there was perfect."

"Do you wish that you could have seen the utopia?" Mukuro asked.

"Do you know how to send me to the actual utopia?" he asked.

"Would you come back if I did?"

Hiei smiled, finding her response amusing despite how inappropriate that was.

"There's another human saying that springs to mind in this moment," Mukuro said.

Hiei hoped that she would not bother enlightening him which human saying she was thinking about, but he could tell by the look on her face that he would not be so fortunate.

"We're up shit creek without a paddle," she said.

"Hn, that's stupid," he immediately replied.

"Stupid but apt," she said.

"There's a spirit world saying that applies here: life is like a river, flowing in one direction, and we sail it as best we can, but, no matter what we do, we can't ever change the direction it takes us in."

"…I like the human one better. It's more succinct."

"Agreed."

Hiei turned from the window and started across Mukuro's office. She followed him to the door and they both stopped there, avoiding looking directly at each other through several seconds of silence.

"I learned a lot during my time working with you," Hiei eventually said. "I appreciate the opportunities you afforded me to improve myself. In other realities, I appreciated them a lot sooner and did more with them."

"Better late than never," Mukuro replied.

"That's another human turn of phrase," Hiei pointed out as he opened the door to leave.

"It was ours before they adopted it," she said.

Hiei stepped outside into the hallway beyond.

"There's something I have to do before I leave," he said. "Don't think I'm running away, because I'm not. I'm ready for this."

"Okay," she said.

"Goodbye, Mukuro."

"…Hiei…"

Hiei bowed politely to Mukuro and then turned from her, walking away without looking back. He did have something very important that he wanted to do before he travelled out to complete his mission, and it was not something he wanted Mukuro to know about, especially after seeing how upset she was that she had to let him go. He knew that she would never understand, either – she had often told him that she could not understand the closeness of his bond with Yusuke and Kurama.

He was willing to do as she had asked – to lure Yusuke and Kurama out and to confront them and stall them where they were – but he was not prepared to fight them.

And so Hiei took himself to a secluded room in the tower and carefully wound sealing talismans around his right arm and taped two over his jagan eye to lock in his most powerful weapons. He placed his sword down on a table and left the room again, trying to block out the discomfort of having his third eye and right arm contained so.

* * *

The journey across demon world was a quiet one. Quiet because there were no signs of life on the route they took and quiet because neither of the two demons who accompanied Hiei on the journey said anything. He suspected that they were silent because they understood his predicament and lacked the intelligence to say anything of substance, so rather than risk incurring his wrath at such a time they pretended to be preoccupied with the controls of the vehicle. And Hiei knew that they were pretending to be checking the instruments and controls, because both of them looked shocked when an alarm started sounding and the vehicle broke down barely halfway to its destination. When they were unable to immediately fix the problem Hiei left the vehicle on the pretence of needing to empty his bladder, but secretly just looking for an excuse to get outside and forget about what was happening for a few precious minutes.

The vehicle had broken down by the border between Mukuro's and Yomi's territories, just outside of Gandara.

Hiei paced about for several minutes, enjoying the silence until the two idiots accompanying him leapt out of the vehicle and began banging at panels along the side of it, yelling frantic curses at each other when smoke started to seep out from the engine compartment. Hiei went back inside the vehicle – because taking his chances inside a smoking vehicle was infinitely preferable to remaining outside with two bickering fools – and sat down by a console at the back. There was a crackling, buzzing noise coming from something above his head, and a glance upwards showed a red light illuminated on an in-built radio. Hiei had never really cared for sitting around listening to a radio before, but out of boredom and a need for a distraction from his own darker thoughts, he reached a hand up and turned the dial on the front of the radio, tuning it more accurately to the signal it was broadcasting.

"–twenty-two and more rain," a vaguely familiar voice came through the radio. "It's been a long time since there was rain around here, but it's almost the season for it, so remember your umbrellas, folks."

It was that idiot fox girl. The one who had miscalled so many of Team Urameshi's battles during the Dark Tournament.

"And again, in case you've been living under a rock, or if you're just in denial, the leader of this fine region died last week," she continued.

Hiei sat up straight and glared at the radio. Mukuro had not mentioned anyone dying – why the hell not?

"Our good ruler, Lord Yomi, was killed when he joined the fighting on the frontline. He stepped out to help our brave soldiers to push the conflict out of our territory and back over the border to Mukuro's territory, but chaos ensued when he was murdered by an unseen assailant shortly after he successfully drove the fighting out of Gandara."

Hiei sat back again. Obviously the chaotic aftermath of Yomi himself falling in battle was what had caused the damage to Mukuro's fortress. Mukuro had probably been subdued because seeing a demon as powerful as Yomi fall had probably been something of a shock to her – if Yomi could fall like that, so could any one of the other powerful demons commanding the armies in this war: Mukuro, Yusuke and Kurama included.

And if Yomi's death had not been enough to cause confusion and an end to – or even just a pause in – the war, would killing Yusuke and Kurama as Mukuro had planned really be the difference maker she had thought it would?

"Supplies in Gandara are still low following the destruction of several warehouses and a farm during the big push," the woman on the radio added. "Food is especially limited, with no fresh food supplies left at all in this region… We're surviving off of cans of gelatine…."

She was crying. She was trying to hide it, but occasionally her voice wavered and she sniffled softly, the microphone she was talking into picking up the sound and amplifying it through the broadcast.

"Water supplies are low all around demon world following the contamination of the River Mizuni," she said, clearly trying to sound calm about this news. "Relief workers recommend only using what you need – keep bathing to a minimum and be sure to reserve plenty of water for drinking. With the upcoming rain forecast, maybe you could… Collect it in a cup and drink it and remember what it feels like to not be constantly walking around with an aching thirst and a throbbing headache…"

Hiei switched the radio off. He wanted a distraction, but he did not want it in the form of listening to a pathetic fool moaning about the hardships of her worthless life. That was hardly unbiased reporting, he thought. Was it not her job to report the news honestly? To tell the facts and not to embellish them with tales of woe from her own life? If she was really so miserable, why was she even still there? She certainly took her job very seriously, to stay in that arena, with minimal food and water supplies and the risk of being slaughtered at any moment, solely to continue hearing her own voice on the radio every day. Then again, she was a loud-mouthed idiot who had insisted on putting herself in danger at every tournament she had announced, and all presumably because she loved to hear own voice broadcasting out around all of demon world.

Hiei suddenly found himself experiencing a vividly clear memory of the day he had taken Monzan to the arena in Gandara, and how the boy had adored that stupid fox girl, and she had even humoured him into thinking that his singing was being broadcast on the emergency broadcast network, on every television and radio in demon world.

It was an interesting thought.

Hiei grunted involuntarily as one of his travelling companions returned, dropping a metal gear twice the size of his head onto the desk at Hiei's side. With greasy hands he picked up the microphone from the communicator and dialled in a number, his call shortly answered by Mukuro's voice.

"We've had a slight technical problem, Lord Mukuro," he said. "It's probably gonna take us about two hours to fix this."

"Is Hiei still with you?" she asked.

"Yeah, he's here."

"Tell him not to run on ahead. Tell him to wait until you've fixed it and make sure you take him to the agreed point. Call me when you get there."

"Yes, Sir."

The demon terminated the link and nodded at Hiei.

"You do realise that Mukuro is a woman?" Hiei asked him sarcastically.

"Yeah, but it's more respectful to call her "Lord" or "Sir"," the demon replied. "Those are more important titles than "Lady" or "Ma'am"."

Hiei did not have the energy to point out that what the idiot had just said would get him killed if he ever said it in front of Mukuro, and so he chose to ignore it.

"We're stuck here for two hours now?" he asked instead.

"Pretty much," the demon replied.

Hiei moved his eyes to the inert radio, a strange sensation passing over him. He felt as though something was draining from his head, and he started to think that it must be his common sense and logic when he found himself standing up and starting towards the door.

"Where are you going?" the demon called after him.

"That's not your concern," Hiei replied without looking back. "If I'm not back by the time you've finished repairing this pile of shit, turn it around and go back to Mukuro."

"…Why? What are you going to do?"

"Something I know I'm probably going to regret. But since it's the sort of decision I wouldn't usually make, I'm going to do it, since it's unlikelihood means it may well be a good decision."

"…What?"

Hiei stepped out of the vehicle, drew in a deep breath and then took off sprinting at his top speed, crossing the border into Yomi's territory – the first time he had done so in over ten years in his own reality – and aiming himself towards the arena that fox girl was reading the news from. He knew that if he slowed his pace for even a fraction of a second that he would surely change his mind, turn back and continue onwards as he would have done if the transport carrier had not broken down.

Was it a stroke of good luck that it had broken down?

Hiei had experienced the worst possible idea of his life. It was a terrible idea, one sure to have disastrous consequences, one that would probably kill Yusuke and Kurama from shock – not to mention what it was going to do to poor Mukuro – and it was an idea that Hiei had not really thought through yet. He was about to enact it in a matter of seconds, and he had not thought it out beyond the notion that, inside the Gandara arena, he had access to the emergency broadcast channel that could reach every television and radio around demon world. Live.

Hiei burst through the doors into the arena, hurrying out onto the open floor and looking about himself for the fox girl and her broadcasting desk. Several surveys of the entire arena did not uncover her, but he did see her desk mounted amongst the stands and he hurriedly leapt over the railings to approach it. The speakers mounted around the arena had silenced only an instant before he had stepped out onto the arena floor, so he knew that she had to be somewhere nearby, and he needed to find her if he was going to successfully pull off his plan.

Not that it was really a plan, since he had not actually done any thinking about it, it was more of an irrational idea, thought up in the heat of the moment – the sort of thing that Shuichi would probably have admonished him for even contemplating, and now here he was about to action it.

Hiei stopped by the broadcasting desk, looking down blankly at the girl cowered under it, her arms over her head, one dirt-ingrained hand still clutching her microphone with the sort of stubborn tenacity only she could possess over something so trivial.

"Hey, woman," Hiei said.

She lifted her chin slightly and green catlike eyes looked up at him warily.

"H-Hiei?" she asked.

Her face was almost as grubby as her hands – presumably because she had not washed in some time in an effort to conserve the clean water she had at her disposal for drinking.

"Tell me your name, woman," Hiei said to her. "I'm going to make the effort to remember it."

Her eyebrows flickered and the corners of her mouth twitched, and a slightly indignant look passed over her eyes.

"You're a jerk, Hiei," she said, letting her hands slide from her head. "I'm on television every day, how can you possibly not know my name?"

She crawled out from under the desk and stood up, brushing off the excess dust from her clothing before eying him over suspiciously.

"You look very clean and presentable," she said.

Her eyes moved to the talismans on his forehead and she squinted at them, her eyes flicking about as she read the details on them.

"What-what are you doing to yourself?" she asked.

"Never mind about that," he replied.

She had not bothered to tell him her name yet, but he thought that maybe he could remember it. Was it Johto? No, that was the name of that island where all those strange monsters lived. Kaito? No, that was someone else – though Hiei could not remember who. Kiba? No, that was the name of that strange boy who liked to look at the moon all the time. Kokou? That sounded familiar, maybe that was it.

"Listen Kokou, I need you to do something for me," he said.

"Kokou is Enki's widow, you ass," she flatly replied.

"Toto?"

"…Well at least you're taking my mind off of the food shortage around here…"

"Bobo?"

"It's Koto, you prick!"

Hiei sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Idiot!" he snapped at her. "Why didn't you just say that before?"

"Because you should already know my name!" she growled back.

"…I need you to do something for me, it's very important."

"Why should I?"

"I will kill you if you don't."

"…Quickly or slowly?"

"Which would you prefer?"

"…I'm not sure."

"Then both."

Koto pulled a face at Hiei.

"How is that possible?" she asked.

"Never mind, just stop asking stupid questions and start making yourself useful!" Hiei barked impatiently. "I need to send out a message. Give me a microphone and get a camera."

"…A microphone and a camera? Just tell me what the message is, and I'll announce it in the next news report."

"This isn't headline news, it's… More important than that."

"Nothing is more important than headline news, that's why it's called "headline" news."

"Don't get smart with me woman, just get the camera and the microphone, I have to send out a message."

"Fine."

Koto sighed and pretended to look bored, but still managed to vault over the railings with catlike agility, taking herself down to the arena floor. From there she disappeared through a door to the same under-seating area Hiei had visited in the paradise reality to steal the recording of Hitoshi's famous speech – which was actually quite ironic, he mused. She emerged a few seconds later with a camera cradled in her arms and looking both amused and displeased as she carried it up to her desk.

"This had better be important, Hiei," she warned him as she rejoined him.

"It is, so make sure that you broadcast it over the emergency broadcast channel," he replied.

Koto sighed quietly and muttered something indecipherable as she began plugging in various cables to a console mounted on the desk.

"And don't fake it!" Hiei added. "Don't just pretend to broadcast me. I know that you can project the recording onto that big screen and make it look like your broadcasting it on the emergency channel, so don't bother trying that trick on me like you did to my son!"

Koto stopped moving, and stayed frozen on the spot for so long, Hiei began to wonder if she had become enchanted somehow. Then she blinked, started to breathe again, and turned her head to look directly at him.

"You have a son?" she asked, her top lip curling in disgust.

Hiei did not answer her, because the honest answer was not one that he wanted to give.

"Wow…" Koto said, shaking her head. "I can't believe you actually managed to find a woman stupid enough to let you put a little bit of yourself inside of her…"

Hiei growled and turned from her, waiting as patiently as he could for her to finish her task; and as she snorted in amusement he realised that what she had just said to him was more than a little ambiguous.

"Hey!" he snapped, rounding on her again. "What do you mean "a little bit of yourself"? Do you mean my seed or my penis?"

"Have you ever spoken into a microphone before?" she asked sweetly, holding up her microphone.

"…I don't like you…" he growled at her in a low voice.

"Try not to draw out any "S" sounds and no hard "P" sounds, got it?" she asked.

Hiei had not understood a single word she had just said, but he was too angry to find the patience to question her, so instead he snatched the microphone from her hand.

"Just get on with it, woman!" he warned her.

"Okay then," she said, picking up the camera and pointing it towards Hiei.

He glanced to his side and saw himself appearing on the enormous screen at the other side of the arena, and in that moment, he realised that he should have taken some time to think before acting out his idea – even if he had just thought past convincing the fox to broadcast him he might not feel so terribly ridiculous and mildly panicked as he did now. Koto turned the camera around to face herself and she produced another microphone from a pocket, smiling as best she could into the camera.

"Hello demon world, this is Koto, broadcasting live with a very important emergency announcement," she said.

The flashing red lights on the camera and broadcast desk told Hiei that it was too late to change his mind – or even too late to even make up his mind about what he was about to do.

"And here to deliver that announcement to all you good people is Mukuro's favourite little guy, Hiei!"

Hiei glared at Koto, preparing himself to berate her for referring to him in such a ridiculous way, making him sound like he was Mukuro's pet as opposed to her second-in-command and heir to her kingdom: but as she turned the camera on him and he once more saw himself on the big screen – this time an image that was being broadcast live all over demon world – he straightened out his frown and took a deep breath, struggling for the words to say.

And when he failed to think of anything better, he reverted to using the tired and pastiche opening line echoing around his head from another famous speech once delivered from that very arena in another reality.

"Denizens of demon world," he said, before pausing to swallow back bile as he considered how clichéd he sounded. "Today, just as we have been doing every other day for the past three years, we are dying for a world where discord and misunderstanding are rife. We are at war, and it is a dirty, brutal and difficult war, without honour and without cause. As inhabitants of this realm, we live to die in battle, but the battles we seek are ones of honour and purpose. Look around you now: do you see any honour or purpose in those who have fallen in this conflict, left to waste and wither where they took their last breath? Denizens of demon world I ask of you: why must we take this ignoble road?"

Hiei paused, his mind still worryingly blank. The words had left his mouth and he had forgotten them as quickly as they had occurred to him: and beyond the camera he could see Koto was peering past the camera itself to look directly at him, her eyes wide. Was she horrified at what he had just said?

Slowly she started to smile, and raised one hand, forming her fingers into the peace sign.

And seeing that gesture gave Hiei's brain the kick-start it needed to continue his address.

"We are a great race, but the infirmities of our race are such that force too often precedes reason," he said. "There is an obvious attraction to the path of least resistance for any soul – demon or otherwise – and the waste of war has become the easy option for us, and been wrongly prioritised over the importance of the works of peace. Look at the headlines: warehouses demolished, rivers poisoned and farms desecrated. This is the breakdown of society, this is not the advancement of any faction or an increase in power, it's a loss of identity and pride in ourselves. The confused nature of this ongoing conflict cannot mask the fact that we are doing far more than killing our enemies, we are killing ourselves. I am not here today to propose that everyone withdraw, either openly or under the misguided belief that an agreement has been reached between our rulers, I am here today to ask for something far more guileless. Today I ask for just two things. Firstly, I ask for two hours, starting as soon as I finish talking. I ask every individual who can hear my voice to stop what you are doing for two hours. Call it an armistice if you will, but know that it is only temporary. Secondly, I ask for a private meeting with General Urameshi and General Kurama to discuss ending this conflict and finding a way forward without any more pointless slaughtering. I am in the arena in Gandara, as this broadcast shows, and, as you can no doubt see, I am unarmed. You have my word that I am here alone and that I do not intend to fight, and I ask that you both meet me here during this two hour period of temporary peace."

Hiei paused, moving his eyes from the lens of the camera to Koto, who was frantically mouthing something out to him. He squinted slightly and leaned to one side to get a better view of her mouth, and clearly saw her silently form the words "are you out of your mind?"

"Yusuke, Kurama, I await your response," he finished.

Koto pushed a button on the camera and the large screen at the other side of the arena faded to darkness and the speakers buzzed a little before softly droning into silence.

"Are you crazy?" Koto yelped, putting the camera down on the desk.

"Probably," Hiei honestly replied. "I did just act on the advice of a crazy man…"

Koto flicked a switch on her desk and the speakers around the arena whined into life again, the sound of static filling the air. She began flicking multiple switches and turning several dials until a light began flashing over one toggle-switch by the top corner of the desk.

"This is probably for you," she said, before flicking the switch and lifting a microphone to her mouth. "You've reached the hostess who always rocks the house, this is Koto–"

"Get me Hiei!" a voice cut her off.

"Told you it would be for you," Koto said in a low voice, slapping the microphone against Hiei's chest.

She released the microphone and Hiei hurriedly caught it as it started to slide down his shirtfront.

"Hiei?" the voice shouted out from a speaker in the desk.

"Mukuro," Hiei answered.

"Hiei, what the hell did you just do?" Mukuro demanded. "I thought we had an agreement: you were to go to the valley, set the trap and wait for my signal! You do realise that you just broadcasted yourself over every television and radio all around the world? Every demon in this realm heard every word you just said, so I hope you meant it! I'm trying to get things under control here, you're little rebellion might have ruined all of that!"

"…Sometimes you have to take the chance when you get it to stand up and make your opinion heard," Hiei replied, memories of Yukina's stand in the ice village filling his mind and bringing a smile of pride to his face. "Sometimes we all feel the same way about something, and someone has to put it into words before it's too late. There's a way forward from here, you just have to trust me."

"Hiei, you are a f–"

Hiei flicked the switch Koto had flicked to connect him to Mukuro's call, relieved to find that doing so terminated the link once more. He placed the microphone down on the desk and looked around for Koto to tell her not to take any heed of Mukuro's response, but the girl was nowhere to be found. It was unlikely that she could have fled the arena so quickly, and after tilting his head back to look up into the heights of the seating area, he eventually spotted her running frantically through the seats. He wondered what had gotten into her, but as he lowered his head again he felt a distinct change in the air around him and he faintly heard footsteps walking across the arena floor.

Hiei was no longer the only S class demon in the arena.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** As Hiei is in Yomi's territory, unsurprisingly, Kurama is the first to respond to his call – but he does not arrive alone. Things seems tense for some time but Hiei thinks that his newfound skills of diplomacy might have calmed his old ally – but just as he becomes complacent, Yusuke and Puu arrive and all is thrown into chaos again. **Chapter 47 – Reality Check**


	47. Reality Check

**Slightly long chapter warning (I condensed the next 4 chapters into 3, so the next 2 chapters will also be quite long)**

 **Recap:** Hiei went back to demon world and Mukuro, and she sent him out to enact her original plan to end the war. On the way, the vehicle he was travelling in broke down and he found out that Yomi had died and demon world was in chaos. He then had the BRILLIANT idea of broadcasting himself giving his abridged and blunter version of Hitoshi's anti-war speech, ending it by calling out Yusuke and Kurama.

* * *

 **Chapter 47: Reality Check**

Hiei kept still and silent. What was happening behind him could be a very good sign, he thought. Perhaps someone still trusted him, because the demon behind him had approached him alone. However, what was happening behind him could just as easily be a bad sign, as the demon behind him was armed and radiating the sort of demonic energy that warned he was preparing to attack.

Hiei held his arms out at his sides and slowly turned around.

It had been ten years since he had last seen the face he was now looking at – and it truly had been ten years without any glimpses, because, even in the other realities Hiei had visited, Kurama had either been in the body of Shuichi Minamino or else hidden away like he had been in Hiei's own reality. Hiei could not actually recall the last time he had seen Youko Kurama, but he assumed that it must have been during a tense conflict and he must have been distracted by the fighting, because he certainly could not remember the fox demon looking quite so fearsome.

Unlike Hiei, Kurama had not arrived at the arena unarmed. That was a sensible strategy of course, Hiei conceded, as he could have been walking into a trap, but it was still extremely unsettling to see a two-headed, fanged plant attached to Kurama's back, its tendrils twitching at either side of his shoulders in anticipation of launching itself on its next victim. It was also unlike Kurama to approach anything bearing a weapon: his most infuriating characteristic was that he had always insisted on starting a battle on the defensive, allowing his opponent to attack and only arming himself and retaliating once he had figured out his opponent's strategy.

But maybe that characteristic had been Shuichi: maybe Kurama was a lot more lethal without the influence of the human to keep his malice in check.

"Do you have nothing to say for yourself?" Kurama asked.

His voice was no longer that of Shuichi, no longer the soft and light tones of his human form, rather it was a rougher and deeper voice, and though still quiet, it seemed a lot more commanding somehow.

"You certainly had plenty to say when you were on camera," he continued. "Or perhaps you were taking your cue from someone, or something, else?"

"No," Hiei replied. "Those words were my own."

"Interesting," Kurama said.

He said no more and did not so much as blink, the only sound and movement around him coming from the agitated demon plant on his back, which was starting to hiss and drool.

"You got here very fast," Hiei said when he was sure that Kurama would say no more. "Were you following me before I got here?"

"Hiei, you are in Gandara," Kurama reminded him. "You are in Yomi's territory and you are minutes away from the heart of the fighting, and even closer to the base camp of Yomi's senior staff, including myself."

"…Right," Hiei said, trying not to sound as stupid as he felt.

"Coming this far into the heart of the conflict and moving into your enemy's territory is quite a bold move," Kurama continued. "Either you are feeling incredibly brave or incredibly stupid: and as you just broadcast yourself worldwide asking demon world for peace, I'm still undecided which is the case."

"You came here alone," Hiei pointed out.

"Naturally," Kurama said. "And I also came prepared."

The plant on Kurama's back let out a particularly vicious hiss and Hiei had to fight the urge to flinch back, even though he was a considerable distance from it.

"You don't trust me," he said.

"Should I?" Kurama immediately asked. "Surely you understand how this must seem to me."

Hiei nodded.

"I've never known you willingly disable yourself, and I've never known you enter any situation – malevolent or otherwise – without your sword," Kurama added.

"I'm serious about this," Hiei replied. "I'm not here to just… Swing my sword around and swear a lot…"

Hiei groaned slightly as he found himself repeating Shuichi's description of him.

"You've never cared for politics and diplomacy before," Kurama said. "I never expected you to place a higher importance on those things over a blunt, abrupt and violent approach. I came here because I had to see it with my own eyes: Hiei, stripped of his weaponry and powers, pleading peace negotiations over simple bloodshed."

"Well now you've seen it," Hiei said.

"Yes, I have," Kurama agreed. "And still I'm not sure that I believe it. I don't know if this tactic of yours reflects the desperation of our world or if it is merely a cry for help from a broken heart. Either way, I have complied with both of your two requests: I have given the order to my army to stand down from conflict and I have come here."

Hiei wanted to ask Kurama exactly what he meant by "a cry for help from a broken heart", but he was keen not to lose any advantage he had managed to gain so far in their conversation, and so he bit back the question and suppressed the irritation that came with it.

"So Hiei, you have me here," Kurama said. "What now? Or do we wait to see if Yusuke will attend this little… Rendezvous?"

"I called you both here because I hoped that we could reach an agreement to stop the war," Hiei replied.

He took a step forwards and although Kurama did not so much as blink, the plant on his back hissed and its two heads rose upwards and then leered forwards over each of his shoulders. Hiei was not sure exactly how Kurama was controlling the plant: was it reacting viciously on his orders or was he restraining it from simply devouring Hiei? Hiei could not decide which scenario would be worse, and knowing how cruel some of Kurama's demon plants could be, he did not really want to find out what the one he was currently wielding was capable of. But at the same time, Hiei knew that he had to continue to build on the groundwork he had laid with his speech over the emergency broadcast channel: demon plant ready to kill him or not, he had to be willing to take the chance and approach Kurama.

"A sensible agreement," Hiei added, approaching the railings by the edge of the seating area, ignoring the hissing of the two-headed demon plant as best he could. "An agreement that means we can move forward without any more shameful and meaningless killing: there's no honour in that."

"I see," Kurama said. "You appreciate that mass slaughter without cause lacks honour. Should I assume that is why you decided not to follow the orders you were given today from Mukuro?"

Hiei fell hard, landing face-first on the ground. He was almost certain that Kurama had paced his speech specifically to ask that last question as Hiei was vaulting over the railings, with the intention of distracting him and making him lose his balance, and he was even more sure of that assumption when he lifted his head and found Kurama suddenly standing over him, having somehow crossed the arena swiftly and silently. Hiei pushed the back of one hand against the underside of his nose to stem the bleeding and looked up the length of Kurama's body to his face. His expression was obscured from Hiei's view, as his head was tilted downwards, the glare of the red sky behind him throwing his features into shadow, and between his long hair and the two heads of the demon plant leering over each of his shoulders, it was virtually impossible to see his face anyway.

"Can I stand up?" Hiei asked him.

He was not really sure that he could, because standing up would take his head closer to the demon plant, and he was slightly worried that it had caught the scent of his blood and now become more frenzied to consume him than before. Also, he did not want Kurama to think that he was looking for any sort of confrontation.

"That depends," Kurama replied.

"On what?" Hiei asked.

"On how you answer my next question," Kurama said.

"Fair enough," Hiei agreed, despite feeling that it was anything but fair.

"Taking a stand and making an anti-war speech is not something I would expect of you, Hiei," Kurama said slowly. "You always thrived in battle, and claimed that you spoke through your violence, that your sword was often a substitute for your tongue, because your actions said more than your words ever could. You killed Mukuro's ambassador and you have never expressed that this conflict was something you disagreed with or were unhappy with before today. Something must have changed to cause you to change, and now I want you to tell me what. And I have an idea about what it might be, so don't try to lie to me."

Hiei felt a chill pass over him. Kurama's tone had changed almost imperceptibly in his last sentence, but the subtle change had somehow been enough to convey the depth of the threat his every word contained. Hiei had never wanted to oppose Kurama, and he had originally allied himself with the fox to avoid just that; and now he was starting to sympathise with the demons he had seen cry and wet themselves at the prospect of being overshadowed by the calm, controlled and devastatingly ruthless Youko.

"Let me make this easier on you," Kurama added when Hiei did not immediately answer him. "One of my blood-sucking plants caught you in no man's land about four weeks ago, but as I approached you, you vanished. You were in the grasp of the plant with no foreseeable means of escape, but you literally vanished, leaving the plant to collapse in on itself from the vacuum your sudden departure created."

Hiei had not thought that anyone had seen that moment, and he had especially never considered how it might have looked to anyone who did. That had been after he had convinced an alternate Mukuro to launch her Diving Realities attack on him whilst he was still under the effects of a previous hit, and he had been sent hurtling through a series of alternate realities, spending no more than a few minutes in each one, and along the way he had briefly returned to what he had thought was his own reality and he had been captured by one of Kurama's blood-sucking plants. By luck he had been sent to another reality before the demon plant could kill him, though he had of course been left considerably weakened from the blood loss.

"You no longer seem like yourself," Kurama said. "Something has changed you, and your ability to disappear has to make me wonder what."

"I didn't disappear," Hiei said.

The plant on Kurama's back hissed and Hiei knew that it was responding to Kurama's scepticism at his answer.

"Not in the way that you think I did," Hiei corrected himself. "Not by choice, or by control. I don't have the ability to disappear."

"And yet disappear you did," Kurama pointed out.

"It was an experiment," Hiei began.

He paused, unsure how to continue. He was not really sure that it was wise to disclose the full details of the experiment Mukuro had been conducting on him, but equally it had been done with the intent of finding a peaceful way to end the war, which was a good thing, so perhaps telling Kurama the truth would not be so disastrous. Mukuro herself would probably be unhappy with his indiscretion, but if it ended the war, she would surely eventually forgive him.

"It was part of a plan to find a way to end the war without conquest," he continued.

"Interesting," Kurama commented. "Continue."

Hiei suppressed a sigh, fighting to keep his emotions in check – because a growing part of him wanted to start swearing and waving his sword around, despite the fact that he was unarmed and yelling would probably only serve to provoke Kurama's demon plant into an attack.

"The war has gone beyond the point of being constructive," he said carefully. "Even if one side did become victorious, what will they gain? Life in demon world worked better when the three factions stayed separate and worked along side each other, in harmony, each pursuing their own ventures and assisting each other where need be… I don't know why this war is continuing: can you even remember why it began?"

Kurama did not immediately answer Hiei, but by the way the plant on his back closed the jaws on both its heads and its many tendrils drooped slightly he knew that he had said the right thing, because apparently Kurama had become calmer and begun thinking about what he had heard. Hiei started to feel optimistic, he started to think that he was quite clever and that he had mastered the art of bullshit that those arrogant diplomats always tried to tell him was an art, he started to believe that he was making progress and reaching through to the part of Kurama that Shuichi had spoken of that did not want to go to war. But Hiei's brief glimmer of hope was rapidly extinguished when an enormous shadow rocketed into the sky over their heads.

Even before he looked up, before he felt the demonic energy and before the enormous spirit beast bayed out its own name Hiei already knew that the shadow was Yusuke and his bird.

Kurama took a step back and to the side slightly as he turned to look up at the sky, and his face was once more illuminated. He was typically impassive and impossible to read, but the behaviour of the plant he was carrying told that he was slightly apprehensive. Presumably Kurama was thinking the same thing that Hiei himself was, he decided: was this about to turn into a three-way fight to the finish?

As the bird descended into the arena its features began to become visible, starting with its enormous clawed feet and long, flowing blue tail, followed by the underside of its body, its strong wings, long neck, silky black mane and long, lethal beak, and finally the figure sat on its shoulders came into sight. Just as he had done when Hiei had seen him in spirit world, Yusuke looked quite alarmingly like Raizen. His hair was a pale silver, covering his back and thin, stiff strands falling down over his face and casting his eyes into shadow. His upper body was bare, revealing the odd collection of blue markings he bore, and although he was only slightly taller than Hiei remembered him to be, he was broader across the chest and shoulders and clearly more muscular all over. He was sat cross-legged on his spirit beast's back, and he remained that way until the bird had landed and laid down, only then leaping to the ground, his face still mostly obscured beneath his hair.

"Well, well," he said as he slowly approached Hiei and Kurama. "Looks like I'm late to the party again. What'd I miss?"

"I just asked Hiei why he took the stand that he did and called us here," Kurama answered him.

"Before he answers you, maybe you should answer my question: why did Hiei just call me out to your territory, saying he was alone and unarmed, but when I get here I find you here with him, armed with a giant poison pansy?" Yusuke asked.

The feeling that things might yet go in his favour left Hiei in that moment. If Yusuke was going to be hostile and suspicious, Kurama would quickly get back on the defensive, and unless they could keep their instincts in check, a three-way brawl could yet erupt between them: which had, of course, been Hiei's original objective, but it had never been the outcome he had hoped for.

"I'm as surprised by this as you are, Yusuke," Kurama said. "It's arguable which of us knows Hiei better, but I think I can safely say that you must have been as surprised as I was to hear the words "the infirmities of our race are such that force too often precedes reason" emanate from Hiei's mouth."

"No shit," Yusuke flatly replied.

Hiei thought that Yusuke might have been smiling when he had spoken, but the expression was brief and barely detectable beneath the shade of his shaggy hairdo.

"I admit, I was drawn here as much out of curiosity to see Hiei and how genuine his words were as I was by the opportunity to respond to his proposal with my own opinions of this war," Kurama said.

"I gotta admit, I don't ever remember Hiei being one for "fancy words"," Yusuke said.

Hiei did not know if he was amused or offended by the brutal accuracy of Yusuke's response.

"And I don't really remember him being one for diplomacy or tact, either," Yusuke continued. "In fact, I remember him more as the kinda guy who just cut down anyone who disagreed with him."

"That was certainly what he did to the ambassador in his own camp," Kurama replied. "But I think you are doing Hiei a disservice and showing yourself as ignorant if you think that's all there is to him. He may be blunt and he may lack finesse, but he is a complex character."

"I never said that I trusted him," Yusuke said. "And right now, I don't trust you either, fox boy."

"The feeling is mutual," Kurama said. "This conflict breeds mistrust, but beyond that, I know of your dealings with Koenma and spirit world – underhanded tactics or the plea of a desperate man?"

"Yeah, okay, I admit, I've been in contact with Koenma recently – though in my defence, I haven't been there half as often as Hiei has lately – and my dealings with Koenma have nothing to do fighting this war and trying to gain power. How do you explain what you've done to no man's land with your flowers and weeds?"

"You are correct, I have planted several demon plants at key locations in no man's land. But that has nothing to do with fighting this war or gaining power either."

Yusuke and Kurama stood staring each other for some time in silence, apparently both wondering exactly what the other's intentions really had been but neither willing to confess their own agendas.

"Stalemate," Yusuke eventually said.

"Agreed," Kurama said. "And so let us refer to our original query: Hiei, what drove you to make this stand and call us out here like this?"

Hiei tried to stay calm as both of his former allies turned to him expectantly. He really wanted to stand up again, if only so that he could better see their faces, which were cast into shadow every time they turned his way because of the angle he was viewing them from. Equally however, he did not want to stand up until he was sure that doing so was not going to start a fight as his actions were misinterpreted as a threat.

"I was afforded a very profound view of my life," Hiei said carefully. "A view that highlighted all the errors I have made and the arrogance I made them with. It was humbling and it made me realise that I didn't want to continue that way any more. I didn't know if it was possible, but I wanted to take a chance on improving things."

"That's not like you, Hiei," Yusuke said. "But I believe you."

Hiei could not stop his face from twitching in surprise – he had expected to face more resistance in convincing the two generals than this.

"I know what you were meant to do today," Yusuke continued. "And the fact that you didn't do it tells me that you do actually care, and the fact that you came here and broadcast yourself talking the sort of shit I usually only hear from Koenma tells me that you actually mean it. I don't know what view you got of your life or how it happened, but I don't think – for you at least – anything could have been more "humbling" than standing up in front of the entire world and saying that you want the slaughtering to stop."

He reached a hand up to his forehead and swept his fingers in one direction and then the other, parting the hair that hung over his face to give the others a clearer view of his features.

"I've always believed in giving anyone a chance to explain themselves," he said. "If I didn't, I'd be the biggest hypocrite who ever lived, because, let's face it, I've got a bit of track record for getting myself into trouble without having bad intentions."

He smiled, his expression visible even to Hiei still sat on the ground.

"I'm willing to hear you out, squirt," he said to Hiei. "But if I don't like what I hear, you better believe I'm gonna kick your ass."

"That's fair," Hiei agreed.

They both turned to Kurama who sighed quietly before holding out one arm and turning his head to watch as the demon plant on his back slithered down the length of it to his hand, shrinking as it went. The plant paused on his upturned palm, shrinking back in on itself until all that remained was a single seed, the same shape as a walnut and about twice as large as one. Kurama closed his fist around it and turned, fixing his eyes onto something beyond Yusuke's shoulder.

"Puu?" he said.

The spirit beast lifted its head curiously and Kurama threw the seed with a flick of his wrist. Both Hiei and Yusuke watched in surprise as Puu caught the seed and cracked it open in its beak, the shattered hull falling to the ground as the bird ground up the sweet centre and then swallowed it down.

"I thought it was only fair," Kurama explained when Yusuke and Hiei turned to him after watching Puu devour the seed. "Seeing as Hiei is so clearly unarmed."

"Right," Yusuke said, nodding his head and holding up the index finer of his right hand. "Well, um…"

He idly scratched at the back of his head as he frowned down at his finger in thought, holding that position for several seconds before doing a distinct double-take at Hiei's right arm. His face lightened as an idea occurred to him and he took a step closer to Hiei.

"Can I have one of those?" he asked, pointing his non-volatile finger at Hiei's talisman-covered arm.

Hiei peeled one of the talisman from his upper arm and held it out towards Yusuke, who took it with a nod of thanks. He then quickly wrapped it around his finger, containing it completely and smiling at his handiwork: but his demeanour quickly changed.

"Holy shit!" he yelled, his voice echoing around the stands. "Motherfucker!"

He grabbed the wrist of his right hand and his lips peeled back to reveal tightly clenched teeth and a grimace of pain.

"Shit Hiei!" he ground out. "This fucking hurts! What the hell is wrong with you? Doesn't it hurt you too?"

"I imagine that it would," Kurama answered before Hiei could. "Though arguably more so, as he is wearing many more of them than the single one you have on. And he would have known of the pain it would cause him before he applied the talismans thus: which is perhaps the main reason why I believe his intentions here today are genuine."

Yusuke raised an eyebrow at Hiei as he shook his hand in the air, apparently still trying to come to terms with the pain the talisman was causing him.

"You always were a strange little guy," he said. "And you always did like causing yourself pain, what's up with that?"

Hiei started to grow confused as a smirk started to appear on Yusuke's face.

"Get your ass off the ground and tell us why you brought us here," he said, holding out a hand toward him.

Hiei stared at Yusuke's hand in disbelief before lifting his eyes to Yusuke's face, finding a confident smirk but an uncertain look in his eyes.

"Curiosity is getting the better of me too," Kurama said, holding out a hand to Hiei. "Get up and explain yourself."

Kurama's expression was typically unreadable, and so Hiei chose to take a chance on them both and put a hand on each of the hands being offered to him, letting Yusuke and Kurama help him up simultaneously. As soon as he was on his feet all three broke contact and Hiei took a moment to straighten his clothes, pausing partway through his actions as he heard a snort come from Yusuke.

"Is that a fashion statement, three eyes?" he asked, reaching out a hand and tugging at a ragged strand of Hiei's shirt.

Hiei was, of course, still wearing the shirt he had been wearing when Mukuro had sent him back to paradise, and it was accordingly ripped and ragged from the strike he had suffered.

"He never could keep his shirt on," Kurama muttered.

"In any sense," Yusuke agreed. "He liked taking off his shirt and he could never keep calm."

"Well so far today he has succeeded at the latter," Kurama pointed out.

"Give him time, it's early yet," Yusuke said.

Kurama smiled at Yusuke, and for the first time since his appearance that day, Hiei could see a clear expression on the fox demon's face: he was happy and amused.

"We're waiting, Hiei," Yusuke pressed, turning to Hiei. "This world has been…"

"Spiralling out of control and plummeting ever deeper into a pit of despair," Kurama offered.

"Right, what he said," Yusuke agreed. "That's been happening more and more, and I thought it had gotten so bad that there was no fixing it. I definitely never expected you to be the one who called a stop to it and did try to sort it all out, Hiei."

Hiei smiled in spite of himself.

"A very wise person once told me that it's never too late to make a difference, to make a stand and do what's right," he said, repeating Yukina's words to him. "To live a life without regret. I'd rather die knowing that I tried than live forever as a coward."

"You did always say that you had no regrets and you never made mistakes," Yusuke said. "But I'm not convinced."

"Neither am I," Kurama agreed. "Something much larger is at work here. This is not a decision you came to easily, Hiei. Something has motivated you, driven you, inspired you to come this far."

"Yeah," Yusuke agreed. "Now tell us what."

"I already did tell you," Hiei insisted. "I had the rare opportunity to see my life from an entirely new perspective, and I decided to use that gift to… Fix things if I could. And if not, I am still glad that I at least tried."

"Making a stand is always an admirable thing to do," Kurama said.

"But you're more the sort of guy who only makes a stand when somebody tells him he's B class material," Yusuke said through a smirk.

Hiei's face dropped.

"Though it was said in a somewhat insolent and jovial tone, Yusuke makes a good point," Kurama said. "I've never known you make such an impassioned stand, to expose yourself to such vulnerability for a cause you have never shown any great interest in before. I have to wonder what has brought about this change in you, because again, I have no doubt that your intentions here today are indeed altruistic, my good friend."

"Well," Hiei began. "I just – wait, what did you just call me?"

Kurama frowned slightly and Hiei started to grow concerned.

"Shuichi?" he asked.

Kurama's frown deepened.

"Shuichi Minamino was the name of the human my soul inhabited during my time in the living world," he reminded Hiei. "I left that body, and that identity, behind when I returned to demon world three years ago."

"Yes, I know," Hiei said darkly. "I know only too well…"

"Come on Hiei, you have to tell us what made you do this," Yusuke insisted. "Because I think, unless I'm reading way too much into the both of you, we all agree here. But just because the three of us don't want to carry on with this stupid war, doesn't mean that the rest of the world's automatically gonna feel the same way. We need to know what made you change your mind, because whatever it was, it must be something pretty big, and maybe it'll make everyone else change their minds too."

"Yusuke is correct, Hiei," Kurama added. "Something powerful enough to sway a mind as cynical and cruel as yours would surely convince the masses of demon world that the time has come to make a change."

"I already told you: I saw life from a different perspective," Hiei replied.

"Can't you be any more specific?" Yusuke asked.

"…No," Hiei said.

"Hiei, please," Kurama said firmly. "You may well hold the key to peace in demon world: you must tell us what it is so that together we can unlock the door to the future."

"Nice metaphor," Yusuke told him. "And seriously Hiei, we need to know."

Hiei glanced back and forth between Yusuke and Kurama, a myriad of emotions and ideas passing over him. He was pleased that his two old allies were so willing to join him again and try to fix demon world, but his loyalty to Mukuro deemed that he could not tell them how he had come to gain his new perspective on life. Also, he did not relish the idea of telling Yusuke and Kurama that he had become rather fond of their favourite ferry girl, the ferry girl who he had let suffer to death during their last mission together, the ferry girl whose death had actually been the beginning of the mess they were now all in.

"I can tell you why he changed his mind!"

Hiei froze at the too-clear female voice still echoing around the arena. Yusuke and Kurama looked up into the stands behind him, but Hiei was still too stunned to turn around.

"He changed his mind because he wants to marry some spirit world ferry girl called Botan, and he wants to get back his son, Monzan Kuwabara."

Yusuke and Kurama both dropped their eyes back onto Hiei and it was arguable which of them looked more horrified – even the usually expressionless Kurama could not stop his shock from widening his eyes and contorting the shape of his mouth.

"You want to get married?" Yusuke asked him.

"To Botan?" Kurama asked.

"And…" Yusuke began, his face twisting further and his voice raising an octave as he spoke. "You have a son… Called… Kuwabara?"

"How is that possible?" Kurama asked, turning to Yusuke.

"Why are you asking me?" Yusuke yelped. "I don't even want to think about Hiei and Kuwabara getting their f–"

"I don't think they had a child together, Yusuke," Kurama interrupted him. "That would be biologically impossible. My thought was that the child is either Kuwabara's with another woman, or else Hiei fathered a child with Kuwabara's sister."

"Shizuru?" Yusuke cried. "Holy shit!"

"You're missing the point, Yusuke," Kurama said. "The point is that Hiei's child is a Kuwabara, and in order for that to be possible, Hiei must have visited the living world. He didn't visit the living world while we were still there, so it must have been after the war began, which could only mean that he must have found a way through the Kakai Barrier."

"…Kuwabara must have opened it for him!"

"And he repaid him by impregnating his sister."

"That's low. And besides, Hiei, what the hell? Shizuru must be about twice the size of you!"

Hiei sighed and looked back over his shoulder in time to see that infuriating fox girl nimbly vaulting over the railings to join them.

"It's all on here, look," she said, holding up a piece of paper in front of Yusuke and Kurama.

"Give me that, you infinite fool!" Hiei snapped, snatching the reality chart from her hands. "You stole this from me!"

Koto shrugged indifferently.

"It fell out of your pocket," she said.

"You took it out of my pocket!" he roared.

"It was an amusing read," she casually replied. "But it does make you sound about as interesting and intimidating as a wet dishcloth."

Hiei started to tell her exactly how uninteresting and unintimidating he found her, but he stopped abruptly as Yusuke yanked the chart from his hand.

"What the hell is all this?" he asked, skimming over the page.

"Nothing," Hiei lied, grabbing at it.

His hands closed around empty space as Kurama snatched the chart from Yusuke and turned his back on them all to read it for himself.

"Fascinating…" he muttered.

"Hey, did I see my name on there?" Yusuke asked, peering over Kurama's shoulder.

"Yes, there it is," Kurama replied, pointing at one part of the page.

"Oh yeah… And hey, what the hell is this about "sex slave"?"

Yusuke slowly turned to look back at Hiei.

"You dirty little bastard!" he said. "You did do it with Kuwabara's sister!"

"What makes you think that?" Kurama asked. "The child?"

"Well, that too, but Shizuru always did look like the leather and chains sort… You sick son of a bitch, Hiei!"

Hiei growled and bared his teeth but said nothing.

"There is something very odd about this," Kurama said, turning to face Hiei again.

"You're telling me!" Yusuke said. "That poor bastard Kuwabara would probably have a heart attack if he ever found out that Hiei had slept with his sister… Damn, talk about keeping it in the family too: Kuwabara was with Hiei's sister, and Hiei was with Kuwabara's sister! That's just… Did you guys ever do it in the same house, or at the same time, or–"

"No, I wasn't referring to that," Kurama cut him off. "Some of this is in my hand-writing: but I don't remember ever writing it or even ever seeing this piece of paper. I don't even know what the significance of the words written here are, I only recognise the names."

"Oh hey, check that out," Yusuke said, pointing at one part of the chart. "It says you own a plant shop with some girl named Maya."

"It also says over here that there isn't a war in demon world, and that certainly isn't true," Kurama said.

"And… It says there that Kuwabara is rich and successful and Yukina is in love with him… What the hell?"

"And here it says that Hiei is married to Botan."

"But only under "paradise". He's Mukuro's lover under "sex slave", and… Ew…"

"Are you alright?"

"I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth."

"Then perhaps you shouldn't look at what it says about Hiei under "switch"…"

Yusuke's eyes flicked over the page until they located what Kurama had been referring to, and as his eyes slowly grew larger and his face turned paler, Hiei started to remember which reality "switch" referred to.

"You…" Yusuke said slowly, lifting his eyes to Hiei. "You went back to the living world and you had… With Keiko?"

"No," Hiei replied. "Well… Not in this life I didn't."

Kurama slowly lowered the chart and Hiei found himself looking at two very confused S class demons.

"Everyone seems a little confused with this latest development. Hiei, can you enlighten us to exactly what all of this means? And why are you here today? What drove you to stand up and demand peace?"

Hiei looked down at the microphone under his chin before turning to the girl holding it out towards him.

"You're not on air right now," he reminded her. "You don't need to talk in that ridiculous voice or wield your microphone any more."

"She makes a good point though, Hiei," Yusuke said. "What is this thing? And why were you carrying it with you?"

Hiei looked down at the reality chart and sighed heavily.

"I visited alternate realities," he confessed, his eyes still on the chart. "I visited a few different and bizarre ones, but I twice visited one very perfect one, and that piece of paper is a summary of the lives I visited."

"…Alternate realities?" Yusuke asked. "How is that possible?"

"What sort of alternate realities?" Kurama asked. "What was the basis of them? Were the abstract or self-centric?"

"What do you mean?" Yusuke asked him.

"Well, either the alternate realities were completely abstract – like, for example, a reality where Hiei had been born a woman – or they were self-centric, born of Hiei's decisions in life and how the alternate options may have played out."

"A reality where Hiei was born a woman?"

"Yes, it is a possibility if the alternate realities he speaks of were abstract. Imagine it like this: perhaps it was a reality where gender roles were reversed, perhaps the ice village Hiei was born into was populated by ice men instead of ice maidens, and he was born as a woman of fire, and thus cast out."

"So… Was his father his mother? And… Would that be like… A reality where men have–"

"I never visited a reality where I was woman! Damn it Shuichi!"

When he saw the flat looks both Yusuke and Kurama were giving him Hiei slowly started to realise his mistake.

"They were self-centric," he recovered. "They were different outcomes of my life based on different outcomes of the decisions I've made in my life."

"I see," Kurama said.

"…I don't," Yusuke muttered, scratching his head.

"He got to see what his life would have been like if he had done things differently at key moments in his past," Kurama explained.

"Oh…" Yusuke said. "And this is the sort of things that happened? So what did you do to end up with Keiko?"

"It doesn't matter," Hiei said dismissively. "What does matter is that I found a reality where this war had never happened, and it was infinitely better than this reality is."

"Now it's my turn to be confused," Kurama said. "If these alternate realities were based on your own decisions in your own life, how could you possibly have visited a reality where demon world was not at war? The war was never your decision to make."

"I killed Mukuro's ambassador, and in the realities where I didn't kill him, he gave a speech that stopped the war from starting," Hiei frankly replied.

"So that was your idea here today?" Yusuke asked. "You thought you could give the speech he never did?"

"…Something like that, yes."

"And all because you visited a reality where you were married to Botan?"

"That's Botan, the ferry girl of spirit world," Koto added.

Hiei turned to her, raking his eyes over her distastefully.

"Is there a reason that you're still here?" he asked her. "You've served your purpose, why don't you go back to… Whatever it is that you do in between bombarding demon world with the sound of your irritating voice?"

"She makes a good point, Hiei," Kurama said. "As I recall, you never cared for Botan before."

"Surely going to a life where you were married to her made it even worse?" Yusuke asked. "Married to Botan… I had a nightmare about that once. And you were jealous that she'd chosen me over you… Huh, that was weird…"

"My life in that other reality was superior in every way," Hiei said. "All of our lives were."

"But married to Botan and having a kid with Shizuru?" Yusuke asked.

"Monzan was not Shizuru's son!" Hiei snapped impatiently.

"But it says here that his name was Kuwabara," Kurama pointed out.

"Yes, Botan used the surname Kuwabara for herself and Monzan while they were in the living world," Hiei explained as patiently as he could.

"Why Kuwabara?" Yusuke asked. "Why not… Urameshi?"

"Because you were just a scullery maid," Hiei spat.

Yusuke's face dropped.

"I think he means that you were still in the employ of Yukimura Restaurant," Kurama offered.

"…How does that make me a maid?" Yusuke asked. "And what the hell is a "scullery"?"

"Let's not worry about that now," Kurama said. "Let's just get a straight answer out of Hiei, shall we?"

"…Okay, but after that, you have to tell me what it means," Yusuke agreed. "Hiei, why was Botan and a Kuwabara kid motivation for you to do this?"

"Monzan was not a "Kuwabara kid", he was my son," Hiei replied tightly. "I was his father and Botan was his mother."

"Poor kid," Yusuke muttered.

Kurama and Koto glared at him and he held up his hands and bowed his head in apology.

"Life there worked," Hiei continued. "I had everything I wanted there – and before anyone interrupts me again, I know, those were never things I strived or searched for before, but once I had experienced them, I realised that they were what I wanted – what I needed – in my life. I had a purpose and direction in my life there, and I… I fell in love with being in love."

"What?" Yusuke, Kurama and Koto all echoed in unison.

"I fell in love with the life, I fell in love with my home, I fell in love with my friends, I fell in love with my son and, most of all, I fell in love with my wife."

Yusuke and Kurama turned to each other and exchanged curious and sceptical looks.

"This is sickening," Koto said into her microphone. "You used to be a ruthless killer, Hiei!"

"This is quite unexpected, but perhaps it is all true," Kurama said, turning to Hiei. "I know, perhaps better than anyone, how love given unconditionally can change even a seemingly heartless demon's opinions and priorities."

"But this is Hiei we're talking about!" Yusuke said. "Am I the only one who remembers the real Hiei here? Do I need to remind you, fox boy, what the shrimp really thinks about love? The definition of love according to Hiei? Are you seriously telling me that you can't remember that?"

There was a short pause before Koto lifted her microphone to her mouth again and spoke.

"Why don't you tell us all? For my benefit, since I wasn't there the first time around."

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei's definition of love, a break in the tension, the arrival of key figureheads of all three kingdoms and an awkward revelation, followed by the very different decisions Hiei, Yusuke and Kurama each make following Hiei's stand. **Chapter 48 – Defining Love**


	48. Defining Love

**Recap:** Kurama (plus pansy) and Yusuke (plus Puu) responded to Hiei's call, and things seemed to be going well, though both wanted to know why Hiei had experienced a seemingly sudden change of heart, and when he could not 'fess up, Koto blabbed the details for him; but still Yusuke and Kurama were sceptical. Hiei? In love? Surely not!

* * *

 **Chapter 48: Defining Love**

"Okay," Yusuke said, nodding his head. "But I'm disappointed that you don't remember this Kurama. Hiei looks like he doesn't remember either, but maybe that's an act because he knows I'm about to totally embarrass him."

"Hn, I don't know what you're talking about," Hiei stubbornly replied.

"Genkai's temple, Shizuru's twenty-first birthday party," Yusuke said slowly. "Near the end of the night, we'd all had quite a lot to drink, and you, me, Kurama and Kuwabara were sitting on the roof of the temple, and Kuwabara was telling us a sob story about how Yukina never seemed to notice how much he loved her."

"Ah!" Kurama said, perking up slightly. "This sounds familiar! Didn't Hiei object to the conversation?"

"Yes," Yusuke confirmed. "But not because it was Kuwabara – who he hates – talking about lusting after his precious little sister – who he was so desperate to protect."

"He objected because he said that love was a word invented by humans," Kurama added. "Kuwabara argued that Hiei would never understand love because he was too cold and cruel."

"And Hiei challenged Kuwabara to define the meaning of the word love," Yusuke said.

"To which Kuwabara gave a long, heartfelt explanation on exactly what love meant to him and why he would gladly die to defend its principles."

"And after that, Hiei said something that always brings a smile to my face to remember."

"…I don't remember what he said after that. I remember that you laughed so hard at it that you fell off the roof, and I remember that it was derogatory and deeply, deeply cynical."

"Hiei said "hn, love is just another word, you clown. Get a dictionary and look it up: you'll find it somewhere in between the words "labia" and "lust""."

A gust of wind whistled past the group and Hiei could have sworn that a roll of tumbleweed swept across the arena floor: but as the wind faded another sound began to fill the air. Kurama was laughing. He started out with a low chuckle, but when Yusuke started to laugh he gave into his emotions and began laughing out loud.

"I don't get it," Koto objected sulkily. "That sounds like a pretty accurate definition of "love" to me! Why is it so funny?"

""Somewhere between labia and lust"!" Yusuke giggled. "It's fucking classic! I think that should be the actual dictionary definition of love!"

"Perhaps it is," Kurama said between snorts of laughter. "Didn't Kuwabara keep a "Hiei dictionary"? I'm sure he added that little gem in there!"

"Shit, I forgot about the "Hiei dictionary"!" Yusuke laughed. "That was hilarious!"

"…There's not actually a "Hiei dictionary"…" Hiei muttered. "That was just… Just a joke, wasn't it?"

Yusuke and Kurama both shook their heads, silver hair waving in the air around them. Hiei contemplated killing Kuwabara, but when he thought about how ridiculously happy the idiot made Yukina, he decided against it. Though he was still sorely tempted to bludgeon him to death with a blunt and heavy object.

"Damn…" Yusuke said, his laughter ending and his smile slowly fading. "It's only been three years, but it feels like forever since I last saw that idiot Kuwabara…"

"I am quite sure that his life, just like our own lives, strayed away from the direction it had been taking when we all still lived in the human world," Kurama said, becoming serious himself then.

"He turned into such a dork," Yusuke said. "He grew a beard and got a sensible job."

"Why are you telling me that?" Hiei asked. "I already know."

"How can you already know that?" Kurama asked him. "Kuwabara was still a student when you were banned from the living world."

"I… I've been to the living world recently," Hiei confessed. "I was able to get there when I visited other realities where the Kakai Barrier did not exist, and when I returned to this reality, I only travelled through realities, not physical space. I usually returned to the living world, on the wrong side of the Kakai Barrier, and, every time, the SDF found me and sent me back here… Actually, I've been in the living world for the last few weeks. At first, in another reality, but latterly in this reality. I… Wanted to free Yukina before I came back here, so I convinced Kuwabara to cut open the Kakai Barrier and we went to demon world together and took Yukina back to the living world."

"Yukina was in demon world?" Yusuke asked. "And Kuwabara never tried to come and get her before now?"

"Didn't your friend Koenma tell you?" Hiei asked him. "Hn, no of course he didn't. All demons were made to leave the living world before the Kakai Barrier was erected, including Yukina. She was taken back to the ice village, and she was very unhappy there. Kuwabara did try to get to her – because he could see that she was unhappy with his "red thread of fate" trick – and eventually spirit world had to stop him, so the SDF placed blocks in his mind to make him forget about Yukina, his spirit sword and all of us and everything he had done for spirit world. He was a mess when I found him."

"And you willingly restored his memories and left your sister in his care?" Kurama asked.

"…It wasn't that simple," Hiei replied. "And Yukina is very safe and happy where she is now, which is all that matters to me."

Kurama narrowed his eyes slightly and took a step closer to Hiei, hooking a finger under the chain around his neck, pulling upwards until Hiei's hiruiseki spilled out of his shirt.

"Where is the other one?" he asked, lifting his eyes to Hiei and retrieving his finger.

"I gave it back to Yukina," Hiei replied.

"What does that mean?" Yusuke asked. "I thought she refused to take it back when you tried to tell her that her brother was dead?"

Hiei tried to keep his face neutral but he could tell by the slight flinch in Kurama that he had not fooled the fox.

"You told her the truth?" he asked.

Yusuke balked.

"You actually told her?" he echoed. "You seriously told Yukina that you're her brother?"

"…Maybe…" Hiei muttered.

"Whoa…" Yusuke gasped.

"And so Kuwabara must also know too," Kurama concluded.

"I was forced into telling him," Hiei said moodily. "Shizuru forced me into telling Kuwabara and Keiko."

"Keiko?" Yusuke echoed. "You-you saw Keiko?"

"Yes," Hiei replied. "She helped me recover Yukina."

"What?" Yusuke yelped. "You took Keiko to demon world?"

"No, I came here with Kuwabara, Botan and Shuichi," Hiei replied. "Keiko, Shizuru and Maya stayed behind in the living world to distract the SDF from resealing the breach Kuwabara had to create in the Kakai Barrier to let me through to reach Yukina in the first place."

"…What?" Yusuke muttered.

"Shuichi?" Kurama asked. "And Botan? And… I don't understand at all: how did you become allied with those people?"

"…It's complicated," Hiei slowly replied. "At first I was just trying to get that idiot Kuwabara to remember who he was and open the Kakai Barrier for me, and then Keiko helped out by deterring spirit world, and then I needed to get Maya to use her plants on Kuwabara, and then Shizuru made me give Maya her memories back, and then Maya made me get Shuichi out of the insane asylum – which is where the idiot belongs, because he is crazy – and then Kuwabara got his memories back, but we needed to hide Yukina somewhere safe so we had to build the tree-house and make Kuwabara win that contract, and then we had to get to the ice village and rescue Yukina, so Botan came up with a plan, and it all went wrong, and Shuichi made the women in the ice village burn their bras and lose their minds, and then the SDF caught Maya and Shizuru, and then Keiko went crazy and nearly died fighting them off so that I could come back here."

Hiei sighed, looking down at the ground as he considered just how hectic the last two days had been. He had secured the safety of Yukina – and inadvertently Kuwabara too – but he had no idea what had become of Shuichi and the women – Botan, Keiko, Shizuru and Maya – who had all been captured by the Special Defence Force.

"…Keiko fought the SDF?" Yusuke asked.

Hiei looked up again, the vacant and almost childlike look that greeted him looking disturbingly out of place on Yusuke's full-demon face.

"I told her not to," he replied. "But she was determined. I… I think I'm indebted to her. She convinced the others to help me rescue Yukina, and she risked her life and her soul to help me escape. She jumped from a moving train and she physically fought those SDF soldiers… I never thought she had that much… Courage and determination. I was impressed. If a demon had behaved that way, I think I would have been impressed, but she – a mere human woman of no great spiritual or physical strength – stood up and fought with everything she had."

"Keiko jumped from a moving train and wrestled with those powerful spirit world soldiers?" Yusuke asked. "Keiko? Keiko Yukimura? Keiko of… My Keiko?"

Hiei nodded.

"She was taken away by the SDF," he said. "She was arrested for assisting me and lying to Koenma. The SDF took them all – Keiko, Botan, Shuichi, Shizuru and Maya. Botan said that you could probably negotiate with Koenma for their freedom. I would appreciate it if you would do that as soon as you possibly can – I am only here now and Yukina is only safe because of their assistance and hard work. I am indebted to them, and it would be unfitting for them to be condemned as criminals by spirit world."

"Keiko did all of that?" Yusuke asked.

"Yes," Hiei replied, frowning slightly at the increasingly lost look on Yusuke's face.

"Keiko fought the…? For the…?"

Yusuke slowly lifted a hand to cover his mouth, his eyes blurring slightly.

"She…" he mumbled into his hand. "I promised her that I wouldn't be gone for long when I came back here, and it's been three years… She must have given up on me by now…"

Yusuke slowly lowered his hand again and looked down at himself, turning his hands over in the air to study the markings on his arms and then looking back over each of his shoulders in turn at the impressively long and thick mane of hair that fell down his back.

"She wouldn't even recognise me now," he said quietly. "What I've become, I… This was never what I had planned."

Hiei felt himself struck by another odd moment of inspiration and he decided to take a chance on trusting it: it was something that Botan had said to him and so he was sure that it was correct.

"Of course she would still recognise you, you idiot," he said. "Keiko recognised you the first time you transformed, and she always will."

Yusuke slowly shook his head.

"But look at me now," he said faintly.

He looked like he was about to cry – and although that seemed quite weak, Hiei felt oddly sympathetic towards him for it.

"It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside," he said. "She can… See your heart, because she loves you. You could probably dress yourself up as Kuwabara and she would still know that it was you on the inside."

Yusuke let out a short laugh, a tear escaping one eye and slipping down his cheek.

"You're joking, but that seriously happened once before," he said. "After I died, when I was taking my ordeal to come back to life, I possessed Kuwabara's body so that I could speak to her, and she knew that it was me. She looked right into my eyes – right into Kuwabara's eyes – and I saw this… Spark of recognition… But there's a limit to how many times you can let someone down and still expect them to forgive you and… Accept you as you are."

Yusuke tugged at a chunk of his hair, and another tear left his other eye.

"May I ask a question about your time in the living world?" Kurama asked Hiei.

Hiei nodded.

"Did you see my mother at all?" Kurama asked.

Hiei nodded again.

"She was miserable the first time I encountered her," Hiei confessed. "She didn't cope too well with what Shuichi became after you left him, and because he ended up in an insane asylum, she became depressed. Her husband left her. She was much happier the last time I saw her, because she got Shuichi back."

Kurama nodded and smiled ruefully.

"I'm glad," he said. "I knew she would notice a difference in her son, and I didn't want her to be unhappy. I hope that Shuichi can support her and bring her happiness from now on."

"…Shuichi has a way with women," Hiei said flatly. "They seem to… Do whatever he suggests… No matter how absurd it might be…"

"And I have to know: the Maya that you speak of, is that Maya Kitajima?" Kurama asked. "The same girl I was trying to rescue from demons when you and I first met?"

"Yes," Hiei confirmed. "You maybe wiped her memories, but she always knew that something was missing, and when I restored her memories, she was glad to know about you again."

"Why did you restore her memories? And how did she become involved in what you were doing?"

"In that other reality, she was your… Lover. And I knew that she had a plant that could help me restore Kuwabara's memories, so I did what I had to do to make her cooperate."

"I still can't believe the SDF did that to Kuwabara," Yusuke said. "And now they've arrested Keiko and everyone else? What the hell for? They're such bastards!"

"They act on the orders of King Enma," Kurama pointed out. "They are only doing their duty, we should not judge them so harshly."

"They could say no if they thought their orders were wrong," Yusuke said. "Look at Hiei: he was ordered to kill us today, and he went against his own boss and this entire world because he didn't think his orders were right."

Yusuke and Kurama looked at each other for a long time, their expressions slowly softening as they did so.

"If we are all of the same frame of mind, why did neither you or I do something about this much sooner?" Kurama eventually said.

"I kept thinking it would stop," Yusuke said. "I didn't know what the hell I was doing – politics and war have never been my thing, and I kept thinking I could find a way out, or that someone would back down."

"I tried to control the violence and the killing, but I know I could have done more," Kurama said. "And truthfully, I feel quite ashamed of myself now."

"Yeah, I guess Hiei is the most ballsy of the three of us," Yusuke said.

Kurama and Yusuke turned to him and Hiei almost felt embarrassed: but he quickly covered it by asking the one question he had been holding onto since their arrival.

"If we all agree that this war needs to stop, what do we do next?"

Kurama's ears twitched and his eyes widened slightly.

"What is it?" Yusuke asked him.

"I think the time for talking is over," Kurama darkly replied. "We are no longer alone here."

Yusuke and Koto began looking around the arena curiously and Hiei almost found their actions comical as he was struck by the same realisation that Kurama had apparently experienced: there were at least fifteen of them, split into three groups of five, each group approaching from a different direction. Yusuke stopped looking about and his face changed, his slightly shocked, mildly afraid expression telling Hiei that he finally understood what Kurama and Hiei had already figured out.

"Shura and some of the senior staff of my army," Kurama said quietly.

"Mukuro and some of her top soldiers," Hiei said.

"And Hokushin and the monkettes," Yusuke said.

"This could rapidly turn into something quite terrible," Kurama warned them.

"We could bail," Yusuke suggested. "Puu can take us out of here to somewhere safe until we have a plan to deal with them."

"No," Hiei said firmly. "No more running away. No more delaying this. We stand and face this, whatever it may be."

"We are ridiculously outnumbered," Kurama pointed out.

"So we just stick together, right?" Yusuke asked.

Hiei felt that strange tugging feeling in his chest when Kurama nodded in agreement to Yusuke's question. The last thing he had expected was for the three of them to end up joining together and making a stand together: and he was torn between enjoying the idea that they had decided to side with him and hating the thought that shortly all three of them would probably be tortured to death for treason.

"We're still unarmed," Yusuke pointed out, holding up his bandaged finger.

"If we want a peaceful solution, we have to lead by example," Kurama answered him. "We won't fight them."

Yusuke started to question Kurama's last statement, but he stopped when their anticipated guests began to arrive. Mukuro and her men walked into the arena from the floor entrance, Hokushin and his group crept down through the stands after having apparently scaled the exterior wall of the arena and Shura and his soldiers arrived through an exit door, kicking it from its hinges to pass through the doorway. Yusuke, Kurama and Hiei backed up on instinct, and Koto somehow managed to place herself between all three of them, hiding behind them all.

Mukuro stopped a short distance from them, her arms folded and her eyes narrowed, her men all standing a step behind her. Hokushin stopped a short distance from her, and the two took a long look at each other before both turning their attention back to Yusuke, Kurama and Hiei. Shura's soldiers stopped similarly back from the others, but Shura continued towards them. Hiei tensed, remembering that Yomi's son (or rather, his young clone) was perhaps one of the most brutal and sneaky monsters to be found in demon world. He marched towards the trio, but his eyes were not on them, and Hiei was not the only one to grunt in confusion when he continued past them and leapt up into the seating area. Hiei glanced at Yusuke and Kurama, drawing a small amount of relief when he found them looking as confused as he felt. Shura flicked a single switch on the desk and then pointed at the other side of the area, at which Yusuke, Kurama and Hiei turned accordingly, finding a slightly askew image of their own backs standing in the arena.

"You do realise that you've been on air all this time?" Mukuro said.

"What?" Hiei echoed, turning to her.

"The little fox girl broadcast Hiei's speech, there was a short pause, and then she switched it all back on again," Hokushin added.

"The whole world has been watching you three acting like idiots," Shura said, leaping back down to the arena floor.

"Fuck," Hiei muttered under his breath.

"Can-can either of you guys remember what we were talking about?" Yusuke whispered.

"We spoke about a lot of things," Kurama whispered back.

"Let's kill the vixen bitch," Hiei suggested, looking back over his shoulder with glowing eyes.

When he did not immediately find Koto standing behind him he turned fully around in time to see her crawling out of their circle on her elbows and knees, under the disillusion that nobody would notice. He growled and started to reach a hand out towards her, only stopping when Mukuro spoke.

"I had a thought on the way here," she said. "An idea of how to rebuild the economy in my kingdom."

"Selling Hiei dictionaries?" Shura offered.

"Exactly," she replied.

Hiei froze, silently hoping that the heat he could feel in his face was just a side effect of his anger and not the blush it felt like it might be. Koto scrambled to her feet and stuck her tongue out at him before vaulting back over the railings to her desk, where she began unplugging the camera and microphones, finally taking them off the emergency broadcast channel.

"You uh…" Yusuke said slowly. "You saw that part, huh?"

"We saw everything," Hokushin answered.

"I see," Kurama said, sounding almost entirely calm, but not convincingly so to Hiei, who knew him well enough to sense the small hint of urgency in his tone.

"We especially liked your definition of love, Hiei," one of Mukuro's soldiers said.

The men behind Mukuro began snorting and sniggering, and as he turned to glare at them Hiei was alarmed to see the corners of Mukuro's mouth twitching too.

"It's not fucking funny!" he snapped at her.

"…Yes it is," Shura said quietly.

Yusuke began chuckling into his hand and Hokushin rolled his eyes.

"I thought it was incredibly juvenile," he said.

Hiei started to cringe as the others around him all began dissolving into laughter. He failed to find anything even remotely amusing about the situation, but eventually even Kurama and Hokushin were laughing out loud, and the only slight consolation to be had was that their antics were no longer being broadcast all over the world.

"It's really not funny," Hiei grumbled moodily.

"Well it is, in an ironic sense," Mukuro said, wiping a tear of merriment from her good eye. "Because that genuinely was how you felt about love, and now… Well…"

"Now you're in love with a ferry girl!" Shura said.

"That part is definitely not funny!" Hiei snapped at him.

"That part is perhaps the funniest part," Hokushin said.

Hiei glared at him in disbelief.

"It's ironic," Mukuro said. "You never believed in love to the point that you despised and ridiculed it, and now you've completely changed because you "fell in love with love". The irony of that makes this whole situation really quite amusing."

"This "whole situation" is my life!" Hiei pointed out angrily.

Hiei growled as the others started laughing again. And, as though on cue, the rainfall Koto had foretold on the radio earlier began. At first it was merely a light drizzle, but it rapidly turned into a torrential downpour, every drop of water sizzling and hissing as it landed on Hiei, enveloping him in a thin veil of steam. The talismans on his arm and forehead were stinging painfully as they responded to the flare in his energy, but he almost welcomed the agony of them as they were helping to stop him from reacting violently to the idiots around him.

"So, uh, does this mean that the armistice is permanent?" Yusuke asked as the hilarity began to ease off again.

"I certainly hope so," Kurama said.

Mukuro nodded and Shura and Hokushin nodded too. Hiei sighed, still feeling more pissed off than seemed appropriate: he hated the rain, he hated being laughed at and he hated the Hiei dictionary. But, he told himself, if everyone around him meant what they had just agreed to, then demon world was finally on the road to redemption. He supposed that here, just as he had done in the living world for Yukina (and Kuwabara), it would be possible to make things more like they had been in that other reality. He found himself thinking about that idiot ambassador's words again: "let us build the foundations of paradise, and let us start with a simple act of goodwill".

And he supposed it was up to him to make that first "simple act of goodwill".

"Let's work together from now on," he said.

He hesitated before holding out his left, unbandaged hand. Yusuke and Kurama looked down at his hand curiously before looking at each other. Yusuke was the first to react, breaking into a smile and putting a hand on top of Hiei's. Kurama then gave a small smile and out a hand on Yusuke's. Hiei, feeling a little caught up in the moment, put his bandaged hand on top of Kurama's, and Kurama and Yusuke promptly copied his action, until all six of their hands were in a pile in the air between them.

"I don't know where we go from here, but let's not ever go against each other again, okay?" Yusuke said.

"Agreed," Kurama said.

Hiei nodded his agreement and, for the first time since Keiko had offered to help him restore Kuwabara's memories, he felt unusually optimistic about the future: perhaps, he decided, because he did now have a future to look forward to.

* * *

"Sleeping on the job, Hiei?"

"Hn?"

Hiei grunted and sat up abruptly, his eyes opening to a squint against the glaring sunlight overhead. Mukuro gave him that look he hated – the one that made him feel like a child – as he tried to stand and promptly became tangled in his sword, a pile of weeds and the string he had been trying to bind them together with before he had fallen asleep.

"You fall asleep at this time of day every day," Mukuro pointed out. "It's very unproductive. We'll never get the road cleared if you keep slacking off."

"I like to sleep at this time of day, you know that," Hiei argued, unwrapping the weeds from his legs.

"I don't know that," Mukuro replied. "I just know that every morning you come out here, cut down some weeds, and then fall asleep under the shade of the nearest tree."

Hiei scowled up at her, the genuinely impassive look on her face reminding him that she probably was unaware of his preference for taking a mid-morning nap: after all, she was not the one who had remarked on the habit of his on the past, it had been Botan in the paradise reality who had noted it.

"The road's nearly clear now anyway," Hiei pointed out, rising to his feet. "The border patrol are managing to navigate the route," he added, pointing at a distant vehicle setting off along the almost restored border patrol route.

"But the road is currently only wide enough for one vehicle," Mukuro replied. "We have to send out patrols in one direction only, on a timed rota."

"…I don't see the problem," Hiei said with a shrug.

"When one vehicle has to stop for any length of time, it holds up the others behind it," Mukuro sternly replied. "So get back to work!"

"I don't see why I can't just burn the weeds down!"

"Because you'll overdo it and burn down my entire headquarters."

Mukuro arched her eyebrows and gave Hiei another of her "silly boy" looks that left him feeling incredibly stupid and infinitely childlike.

"Fine," he growled.

He turned and started to reach for the bundle of weeds, stopping short when Mukuro grabbed the waistband of his pants from behind.

"Not so fast," she said. "I need you to do something else for me today."

Hiei slowly turned his head to look back over one shoulder at her. He could tell by the look on her face that he was not going to like what she was proposing.

"You remember the valley on the edge of this kingdom that I wanted you to…" she began.

"Kill Yusuke and Kurama in?" Hiei offered.

"Right," she agreed with a single nod of her head. "Some of Yusuke's men went down there with two of our border patrol guard units, and they found out that it was being used as a refugee camp during the war: it's literally teeming to the brim with life."

"…And that's my concern because…?"

"The demons who fled there don't have homes to return to, and, even though the war ended more than four months ago, they're still too scared to leave the valley. Apparently they have a leader who motivates them and has helped keep them alive and safe all this time."

"Can't someone else kill him?"

"I want you to deal with this, Hiei. Apparently their leader is quite the negotiator: no blood has ever been shed in that valley. There are an assortment of demons living there, some of them S class demons from the rankings of my elite, and the ringleader of the valley has managed to convince them to stay there instead of returning to their rightful places."

"…You're asking me to play diplomatic officer? Haven't you found yourself someone for that role yet?"

"Worryingly Hiei, you are currently the best suited and qualified for the role."

Hiei swallowed hard and slowly straightened up. Mukuro released her hold of his pants and he turned to face her fully.

"I'm not going to like this, am I?" he asked her.

"Probably not," she admitted. "But you would be doing me a great service."

"A favour?" Hiei snorted.

"Alright, a favour," Mukuro agreed. "And I'll owe you a favour in return."

Hiei felt something click in the back of his mind – and although he could not quite pinpoint what it was, he did know that it was telling him that having Mukuro indebted to him was a good idea, and so he decided to go with it.

"Fine," he said. "Do I have to take anyone or anything with me?"

"Just your… Brain," she replied, tapping a finger against the top of his head.

"Very funny," he said flatly, pushing her hand from his head.

He gathered up his sword, attached it to the belt of his coat and straightened out his clothing. He gave a nod to Mukuro and then started to run in the direction of the valley in question. It was a long run, and it was also going to be a strange one for him to make, because it would take him to the border between Mukuro's territory and Yusuke's territory: a place he had not been in his own reality for some time.

The war had ended after his gamble in Gandara, but the work to rebuild the three kingdoms of demon world was long and complicated. After the initial nonsense of signing papers and being seen on television making amends with the key figureheads of the other two kingdoms, Hiei had returned to his home in Mukuro's kingdom, and he had promptly lost touch with Yusuke and Kurama again. It had partly been by choice and partly through circumstance. He had been busy helping to literally rebuild Mukuro's fortress and to clear the border patrol road – he had found the physical labour nicely therapeutic, as he saw his actions as his way of repaying for the damage he had caused to them. Yusuke had briefly contacted him to say that he had visited Koenma and straightened things out with regards to the humans the Special Defence Force had arrested en masse for their assistance in Hiei's little ploy to rescue Yukina, but after that he had not seen or heard from Yusuke since. He had not looked for Kurama and Kurama had not looked for him – but he had heard from one of the border patrol guards that Kurama had apparently disappeared within days of the peace treaty being finalised, and nobody in demon world knew where he had gone, why he had gone or even if he would ever return.

It was not that Hiei had not thought about his friends at all, but he also felt that, after their long years at war, they probably had things they needed to sort out, issues they had to resolve in their own lives, and so he stayed out of their way and devoted his time to repairing the damage and restoring normality to demon world. But he did think about Yusuke and Kurama and what they might be doing. And he thought about Yukina and Kuwabara – were they still in that other part of the living world, or would they have returned to Sariyashki city once more? And Hiei thought about the humans who had so selflessly helped him in his time of need: Keiko, Shizuru, Maya and even that idiot Shuichi.

And, more than anything else, Hiei thought about Botan.

His thoughts of Botan were the most conflicted. He had made quite the confession of love to her before saying what he had thought would be his final farewell to her, and now that he had survived and looked set to live a long life, he was unsure if he felt foolish for exposing his heart the way he had or if he felt pleased that he had perhaps said something worthy of that other Hiei. Botan had not contacted him. He knew that she could not exactly just visit him in demon world, but she had not sent a message to him via Yusuke or otherwise, so he assumed that she did not want to communicate with him any more.

Then again, with the exception of that one visit from Yusuke, none of the others had contacted him, Hiei realised. Maybe he ought to initiate the contact. Or not.

Feeling confused and as lost as ever, Hiei arrived at the valley and immediately saw a series of things that quickly made him forget his own troubles: first of all, there were ice maidens everywhere, tending to wounded and sick demons by the periphery of the valley, secondly the ice maidens were dressed in modern clothing and chatting away cheerfully with everyone else around them, thirdly one of the ice maidens was proudly showing a group of demons that her child was learning to walk – her clearly fire demon, male child – and lastly – and by far most disturbingly of all – a robed figure was standing in the centre of the activity, staring at Hiei with eyes he would never fail to recognise.

Hiei paused long enough to gather his composure before approaching the figure staring at him with the perfectly unreadable expression of a true diplomat.

"I thought that I killed you," Hiei said, narrowing his eyes at the demon before him. "I cut you into pieces and burned every last morsel of you."

The demon drew in a deep breath and removed the robe it was covered in, and as Hiei caught sight of the demon's body, his eyes almost popped out of his head, his mouth voicing his observation before he the word "tact" even occurred to him.

"You have breasts now?" he asked.

The demon sighed patiently and then put on a smile that Hiei found all too familiar.

"I think you're mistaking me for someone else, Sir," a female voice addressed him, only confusing him further. "You must be Hiei, right?"

Hiei nodded, lifting his eyes from the demon's chest to her face.

"My name is Masuyo, you don't know me, but you did know my father, Hitoshi," she said.

Hiei paused long enough to recall Hitoshi – in the paradise reality – telling him about a daughter who had trained as a diplomat and left Mukuro's territory to start a new life doing something else. Apparently in this reality, that something else was to become the motivational leader of the refugee camp during the war.

"Your father was a wise man," Hiei told her, deciding that it might sound like a sympathetic thing to say.

"Thank you," she said, bowing her head. "I don't blame you for killing him. Well, I did at first, but I don't any more. I can see the good that you have done for this world, I can see that you seek to redeem yourself and your wicked ways, and I admire that."

Hiei wanted to tell her that he was not trying to redeem anything, but she was starting to smile, and that was both a sign that he had made progress in getting her on his side and it made her look disturbingly like her father – in fact, if she had not taken off her cloak and revealed her body-shape, he could happily have continued to believe that she was Hitoshi, since she was every bit as ugly and hairy as he had been.

"The people here feel safe," she explained. "They don't want to leave, and I don't think that they should be forced to. If they decide to stay here indefinitely and name this valley an independent territory from the other three, I think that should be allowed."

"I only came here to visit with the former soldiers of Mukuro's army," Hiei replied.

"I like that you call them "former" soldiers, that at least shows that you understand their want to stay here," Masuyo said. "Please, feel free to look around. All are welcome here."

Hiei nodded his head to her politely and stepped past her, starting at a brisk pace towards the valley, only stopping when something stumbled into his path and he almost stood on it, barely managing to stop himself. On an instinct he could only assume he had picked up from living with Monzan in the paradise reality, he reached down and picked up the child staggering around at his feet, holding it at arm's length to study it. It bubbled at the mouth and giggled, it's legs kicking beneath it in apparent contentment. It had the pale, immaculate skin of an ice demon, but the naturally high body temperature of a fire demon. It was male, but it did not look like Hiei himself did – which was something he had often wondered, if other emikos born to the ice maidens would look like him. It had very soft and feathery red hair and enormous green eyes.

It looked like Shuichi.

Hiei started to sweat.

"Hiei!"

A chirpy young ice maiden skipped over to Hiei and took the child from his hands, cradling it in her arms and tickling its feet.

"This is my son," she said. "You saved his life, Hiei!"

Hiei, who was still reeling from the thought that Shuichi had somehow managed to impregnate an ice maiden in the brief, brief amount of time they had been in the ice village, simply stared at the child.

"I gave birth to him the day after you helped us overthrow the elders," the girl continued. "They had already told me that they would cast him out when he was born, but because of you, I got to keep him!"

Hiei sighed loudly in relief and let out a stuttered, awkward laugh that made the ice maiden before him and everyone else within earshot give him funny looks.

"You were already pregnant when he got there," Hiei said. "Thank fuck for that!"

Her face twitched and Hiei realised that he had, once again, forgotten about tact.

"It's a… Bonnie little thing, isn't it?" he tried.

"He's beautiful," she said firmly. "And I love him very much."

Hiei nodded and moved on, rolling his eyes as he went. As he moved deeper into the valley, he was surprised to find a large number of Mukuro's top men still alive there and thriving – and one of them in the company of a slightly pregnant ice maiden who was hanging onto his arm and gazing up at him dreamily. The valley was also populated by powerful demons from Yusuke's and Shura's territories, as well as weaker demons who had simply taken refuge there, including simple farmers who had never wanted to fight; but it was the sheer number of Mukuro's forces and the multitude of ice maidens tending to them all that was shocking as far as Hiei was concerned.

And, as he neared an apparent rehabilitation centre, Hiei saw another familiar face, this time an unforgettable one, kindly helping a demon who had lost a leg to learn to walk with a prosthetic limb. She helped the demon cross a flat piece of ground before clapping her hands appreciatively and then doing a distinct double-take in Hiei's direction, breaking into a huge smile as she sighted him.

"Brother!" she cried, waving a hand above her head.

Hiei nodded and started towards her, feeling that strange tugging feeling in his chest as he saw his sister jog towards him, dressed in human clothes and grinning like an idiot.

"I'm so glad that you came here!" she greeted him. "I just got here today. Isn't it wonderful that the women of our village have been able to help all of these people?"

Hiei nodded, suddenly finding his throat too tight to form words.

"I got side-tracked coming to this valley," Yukina said, looking slightly disappointed. "I did just come to demon world to find you Hiei, and when I saw Rui and she told me the other ice maidens were down here, and I saw that you were asleep, I left with the border patrol and came here to see my friends from the ice village."

"You-you came to see me?" Hiei asked, unable to hide his curiosity.

"Yes!" she replied. "Kazuma and I just got back from America, and we have a little surprise we want to share with everyone. You'll come to visit us, won't you?"

"I can't," Hiei replied.

Yukina's face dropped so quickly Hiei had to turn away to avoid seeing the disappointment in her eyes.

"But… I wanted to show you what we did…" she said faintly.

"I have some things here that I have to take care of first," he said. "Maybe another time?"

"Oh… I, um… Alright, yes."

She turned away from Hiei and started back towards the group she had been with when Hiei had arrived, but the way her shoulders were drooped and the slow, purposeless movements of her feet told him she was upset by his rejection. He had not meant to upset her, but he had been telling her the truth: there was no way that he could go anywhere near the living world until he had fixed two other problems with his own reality.

And those two things would arguably be the most difficult of all, because even that other Hiei had avoided facing them in the paradise reality.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Hiei has two momentous tasks ahead of himself, but both become surprisingly easy when he decides to achieve them using his newfound skills as a negotiator – or is just simple bribery and blackmail? Either way, it leaves Hiei feeling rather smug and accomplished, as he successfully manages to do the two things that other Hiei never did in paradise. **Chapter 49 – Stamp of Approval**


	49. Stamp of Approval

**Implied Yuri warning**

 **Cheese warning**

 **Recap:** Hiei's global humiliation saved demon world from war (basically). Four months forward, work was underway to rebuild the civilisations destroyed by the war and Yukina was back and looking for Hiei: but he refused her invite to visit her in the living world because first he had to have his inevitable confrontations with Mukuro and Koenma…

* * *

 **Chapter 49: Stamp of Approval**

Hiei felt quite smug, and he had decided to indulge the feeling on his journey back to Mukuro's fortress by simply letting himself feel that way without guilt or regret. He had managed to convince Masuyo to take the post as Mukuro's new ambassador, but she had said that she would only take the job if the inhabitants of the valley moved on and no longer needed her there – something that did not seem so ridiculous, as Hiei had also managed to convince a handful of Mukuro's soldiers to return on the next border patrol car and the others were mostly still recovering from injuries and planning to leave once they were fit to move about independently. Hiei was returning to Mukuro with two things in mind: he was going to tell her the good news about having found her a new ambassador – one that was actually quite good – and to call her up on the favour she had promised him before he had gone to the valley.

He knew that it was quite early to be calling for a favour in return already, but he had made up his mind. There was only one thing that he wanted from her, and this was his perfect opportunity to ask for it. He fully expected her to refuse, since what he was going to ask of her was far greater than what she had asked of him, but he was determined to use this opportunity as a means of opening up negotiations on the matter. After all, as much as she was not going to like what he was going to tell her, she was going to have to learn to like it, because it was the way things were going to be, and Hiei refused to back down.

And so Hiei made his way up to Mukuro's office and boldly pushed open the door and stepped inside, drawing in a breath to confidently start the long process of making his deal with her: but when his eyes landed on the scene within her office, all thoughts of everything else but what was before him left his mind.

"Hiei!" Mukuro yelped. "Don't you ever fucking knock before you enter a room?"

Hiei slowly backed out of the room, closing the door as he left. Out in the hallway beyond he swallowed carefully, wondering how many years of therapy he was going to need to recover from the shock he had just received. Mukuro had not been alone in her office. She had been sprawled out, flat on her back, on her large chair, completely naked and with someone else.

A quite specific someone else.

"Hiei!" Mukuro called from beyond the door.

Hiei tried to block out the sounds of her muttering to the person she had been with, only daring to look up when she slipped out into the hallway, swathed in a dressing gown she had obviously wrapped around herself in a hurry.

"Hiei, it's um…" she began, one hand waving around in circles in the air as she searched for the words to explain what he had just witnessed.

"Vile…" he muttered.

"Hiei!" she said.

"Vile," he said.

"Oh Hiei, don't be like that!"

"Vile!"

"Hiei, it's–"

"Vile!"

Mukuro sighed.

"Maybe you should put a sign on your door when you want to do shit like that," Hiei said flatly.

"Well maybe you should knock before you barge into my office uninvited!" she snapped back irritably.

"It's your office, you idiot!" Hiei argued. "Not your fucking boudoir! My eyes are still burning!"

"Oh grow up Hiei!" she sighed. "People do have sex, you know."

"But… In your office? Have you no shame?"

As soon as the question had left his mouth, Hiei then remembered that, in the "sex slave" reality, Mukuro's office had been where they had had sex: or at least, it had been where she had kept him tethered, naked, oiled and ready for sex. Or at least, he assumed that the condition he had found himself in when he had arrived in that reality was him prepared for sex – he had obviously been prepared for something that facilitated the need for his body to be slippery and pliant, and the other options for being kept in that condition did not bear thinking about.

Hiei shuddered at the unwanted memory. And at the idea that maybe that would shortly be the fate of Mukuro's new love interest.

"Vile!" he concluded.

"Don't talk down to me like that!" Mukuro said sternly.

"Do you know who that person actually is?" he asked her.

"…S-sort of…" she said, becoming more subdued.

"Do you realise the relation between that person and me?" Hiei pressed.

"…Um…"

Mukuro started to look humbled but Hiei only felt marginally better about the situation. And when Mukuro's apparent lover stepped out into the hallway to join them, shoddily dressed and dragging the back of one hand over a distinctly wet mouth Hiei edged back warily.

"Hiei, I'm so sorry that you had to… Find out like this…"

Mukuro held up a hand to her partner.

"It's alright," she said.

"No it's fucking not alright!" Hiei snapped. "Do you know who that is?"

Mukuro turned to her partner, who looked remorseful, but still too flushed and unkempt from their activities to be taken seriously.

"She's the bitch who threw me from the cliff when I was a baby!" Hiei snarled.

"Hiei, first of all, she has a name," Mukuro said. "And secondly, Rui is the official ruler and ambassador of the ice village, so please, will you show her a little more respect?"

"Oh, I see!" Hiei drawled sarcastically. "So the two of you were just in there discussing politics?"

"…Yes…" Mukuro said awkwardly.

"Yes…" Hiei growled. "And then you accidentally fell out of your clothes and she tripped and landed face first in your pu–"

"Hiei!" Mukuro yelled.

Hiei growled at her angrily, and she seemed torn between anger and remorse.

"I'm very…" she began nervously. "I've grown very fond of Rui… It was my idea that the ice maidens should visit that valley. I thought it might help them integrate into demon world society, and… I've been sending my guards to watch over them because I…"

"Because their leader is servicing you with oral sex?" Hiei snapped.

Mukuro glared at him but her lack of a verbal response made him feel vindicated for his outburst.

"I know this must be awkward for you, Hiei," she said slowly. "But I've never really felt comfortable when I've been with a man, being with a man always turned me into something domineering and… And when I'm with Rui I feel like a real woman… It just feels so right…"

The two women smiled dreamily at each other and Hiei had to fight the urge to retch.

"I hope you can accept our love, Hiei," Mukuro said, turning to him again. "I'd like your approval."

"My approval?" Hiei yelped. "It doesn't look like you need it!"

"I don't need it," Mukuro agreed. "But as my second-in-command and my heir – and as my closest friend – I'd like to think that I had it anyway."

Hiei opened his mouth, intent on telling her that he would never approve of her clandestine affair with that troublesome wench from the ice village, because, frankly, it was the ultimate insult: but that thought made him stop, and a smirk slowly found its way onto his face.

"I might be willing to approve of this… "Relationship" of yours," he said slyly.

"Good," Mukuro said.

"On one condition," Hiei added.

"…Fair enough," Mukuro reluctantly agreed.

"This works both ways," Hiei said flatly. "If you can take a lover that I find insulting to my pride, then I can do the same to you. And not only will you accept her, but you will also accept the children she gives me – and you will never dare miscall them for being half-human."

Mukuro's face slowly dropped.

"Oh, you mean Botan!" Rui said cheerfully.

Mukuro's good eye twitched.

"You're asking me to accept you taking a woman who tried to murder me and condemned me to a life of hell when I was a mere baby," Hiei reminded her. "You want to make this bitch your little queen, and you're expecting me to be fine with it, when clearly I'm not. What you're asking of me is not nearly as bad as what I'm asking of you."

Mukuro's top lip curled upwards slightly.

"If I take Botan as my wife, and we have children, they will live here and they will rule this kingdom with me when you retire from your post," Hiei insisted.

Mukuro inhaled sharply through her nostrils, holding onto the air as she glared critically at Hiei.

"I don't like this," she admitted.

"I'm not asking you to like it," he replied. "I don't like this," he added, waving a finger at her and her new lover. "But I'll accept it and live peacefully with it if you'll return the favour."

Mukuro turned to Rui, looking at her for a long time before sighing in defeat.

"Fine, Hiei," she said, turning back to Hiei. "Marry your ferry girl if you must. And… She can live here with you and your… Offspring."

Hiei allowed himself to smile: he had not expected to achieve the first of his two primary objectives so easily or so quickly.

"But I want you to do one more favour for me first," Mukuro said.

"Oh fuck, what now?" Hiei groaned, his smile vanishing.

"It's another goodwill mission," she replied. "Your efforts to end the war in demon world have been acknowledged by a higher power, and you've been invited to visit the royal court to be officially recognised for your contributions to improved relations between the worlds."

"…Between the worlds?" Hiei asked, his anger giving way to confusion.

"King Enma wants to see you," Mukuro explained. "I know how much you hate spirit world, and I know that you probably don't want to go there, but he wants to thank you in person for the good work you've done."

Hiei did not know if he wanted to laugh or cry – this unexpected little development was exactly the opening he needed to achieve the second of his two objectives.

"Hn, I have no desire to go there," he said, feigning disinterest. "But, since you are obviously too busy with your… "Paramour" then I suppose I'll go alone and deal with this."

Mukuro sighed and smiled patiently and Hiei spun on his heel, pretending to look indignant, despite wanting to laugh on the inside. Truthfully, he was dreading facing King Enma, and not in the least interested in what the big hairy oaf had to say for himself: but he was going to immensely enjoy the little stop he intended to make en route, to pay a visit to King Enma's son, and to confront the one other little thing that other Hiei had never bothered to fix in "paradise".

* * *

Hiei had a list of bitingly witty and sarcastic insults prepared to issue to each of the nine spirit world Special Defence Force soldiers – he was especially proud of the one he had formulated regarding their captain's substantial moustache – but when he saw the obvious looks of sickened and force tolerance on their faces as he approached them by the gates of King Enma's temple, Hiei realised that he did not need to resort to petty name-calling: this was one war he had already won.

"Hiei," the captain greeted him stiffly.

"Captain Ootake," Hiei replied, bowing his head.

He was deliberately being polite because he had realised that doing so was actually going to piss them off more than if he was rude to them – but he was primarily bowing to hide the extent of his smirk, getting it back under control before he straightened up again, finding the soldiers all looking confused and flustered by his manner of greeting.

"Our previous altercations were merely a matter of following protocol," the captain began, pausing to clear his throat. "We never had a personal vendetta against you, per se, it was more a case of…"

He started to struggle for words and Hiei let him flounder for a moment before forcing a smile and breaking the silence.

"I understand the pressures of taking and following orders from a higher power," he said.

The soldiers started to smile and Hiei let his face dissolve into the sort of look his usually reserved for those he was about to murder.

"And I also understand the need to have the courage to question orders that seem immoral," he added.

Hiei had to fight not to smile as the men and women around him all instantly fell silent and most of them looked alarmed.

"I'm ready to see Enma," Hiei said to their captain, again fighting off a smile when he saw the man's mouth twitch in anger at his omission of their ruler's honorific from his title.

"This way," he said, turning around and marching into the temple.

Hiei followed after him, keeping his head up, ignoring the looks the ferry girls and ogres inside the temple gave him – which ranged from mere curiosity to disgust to plain awe. Frankly, Hiei did not give a fuck what any of them thought of him. As far as he was concerned, there was only one person he needed to concern himself with in spirit world, and that person was the son of the man he was on his way to see.

The captain stopped at the door to King Enma's office and bowed to an especially dreary-looking ferry girl waiting there, who opened the door and beckoned Hiei to follow her inside. Hiei gave one last arrogant smirk and nod to the captain, delighting in the way it made him squirm, before stepping into Kind Enma's office and closing the door behind himself.

"Oh great King Enma, may I present to you Hiei of demon world," the ferry girl said, before kneeling down by the giant's feet and pressing her face to the floor.

Hiei had no intentions of becoming so subservient to someone he had never cared for, but understanding the need for some degree of tact he bowed his head in greeting, remaining on his feet.

"Hiei Jaganshi, fire demon S class of demon world," King Enma said, his voice booming almost painfully around the room. "It has been brought to my attention that you have greatly changed the tides of fate, salvaged your own world from the brink of disaster, and assisted in the establishment of improved relations between demon world and spirit world."

"…Yes," Hiei said quietly, when it occurred to him that he was expected to say something.

"And I see that you are modest, too," King Enma added.

Hiei pursed his lips to stop himself from replying "and I see that you are stupid", since clearly he was anything but modest: he had only visited spirit world so that he could go and rub Koenma's nose in his success, and that was anything but modest.

"I would like to formally recognise your achievements and welcome you into an era of our worlds once more co-existing in peace," King Enma continued. "I wish to award you with something for this purpose."

"I don't want anything," Hiei replied. "At least, nothing material, anyway," he added, pointing at the box an ogre was carrying into the room, which he presumed contained the token of gratitude he was about to receive. "I would rather you gave me a promise of something instead."

"A promise?" King Enma echoed. "That's a little unorthodox, Hiei. Not to mention that it sounds suspiciously like a bribe."

"No," Hiei scoffed. "It's about Botan, your former ferry girl. I believe she originally became human with the intention of marrying your son, and even though they no longer intend to wed, Botan continued with the process of becoming human."

"Yes, that's correct."

"I want her life to be unrestricted."

"I don't follow."

"I don't want there to be any stipulations placed on her life. I have reason to believe that, if she chose to do something with her life that displeased your son, you would condemn her to live a human life, and fail to keep up your agreement that, after 10 years, she can become a spirit. I want you to promise me that, not matter what decisions she makes for her future, you will honour your original agreement with her and allow her to still become a spirit after her 10 years as a human."

Hiei was not really sure whether or not King Enma knew about his visits to alternate realities – if what Botan had said about the guardian of fate being all-knowing was true, than perhaps King Enma even knew what Hiei was implying – that in the "near miss" reality he had visited, Botan had been robbed of her right to become a spirit because she had displeased Koenma and he had gone running to his father for vengeance. But either way, Hiei did not really want to come right out and say that he feared the same fate could befall Botan in this reality. He did not want to be blunt, but he wanted assurance that Botan could chose to do whatever she wanted without the fear of losing her original prize at the end of her 10-year trail.

Basically, Hiei thought to himself, he wanted to know that he could marry Botan and she would become a spirit after the agreed 10 years and live the rest of her life in demon world with him, without the fear of spirit world interfering.

"Botan is a very unique case," King Enma eventually replied. "I have no reason not to allow her to become a spirit after 10 years, but that really is more of an administrative case now. I was the force behind her being allowed to commence this change, but my son is overseeing the remainder of her trial. If you have any queries or quibbles, please take them up with him."

"Understood," Hiei said. "Thank you."

"And now I'd like you to accept this, if you will," King Enma said, gesturing one hand towards the ogre at his feet, who held the box he was carrying out towards Hiei.

Hiei approached him and opened the box, smiling at what he saw within. It was a stupid thing really, and he cared little for it, but he was certainly going to enjoy walking past the Special Defence Force and visiting Koenma wearing a medal awarded to him from King Enma himself "in recognition of great achievement".

* * *

Hiei could not stop himself from smirking as he entered Koenma's office and saw the look of dread on the prince's face. Koenma had gone to the bother of changing into his adult form, and although Hiei had no idea why that was, he did not really care, either.

"Hiei," Koenma greeted him.

"Koenma," Hiei replied, sitting down into the chair that had been placed out for him in front of Koenma's sprawling desk.

"I have a link to the emergency broadcast channel in demon world," Koenma said. "And I saw everything you said and did in Gandara a few months back."

"Indeed," Hiei said.

He saw Koenma's eyes lower to the medal pinned to his chest and linger there for some time before rising to Hiei's eyes again.

"I need something from this place, and your father said that you could fix it for me," Hiei said as their eyes met.

"Alright," Koenma tightly replied.

"Ink up your rubber stamp," Hiei said.

Koenma's eyebrows lowered slightly despite his best attempts not to look confused.

"I took the liberty of having your ogre type these up for me," Hiei said, slapping two pieces of paper down onto Koenma's desk.

Koenma turned to glare at the blue ogre, who smiled sheepishly. He looked guilty, and well he ought to, Hiei thought, since he had actually taken a considerable amount of pleasure out of assisting Hiei, despite knowing that what he was doing was going to inevitably upset his boss.

"What are these?" Koenma asked, turning back to Hiei.

"Contracts," Hiei replied. "Contracts that need your stamp of approval…"

"…I see…"

"One is to confirm that you will allow Botan to become a spirit at the end of her 10-year trial as a human. The other is to confirm that you approve of her marriage to me."

Koenma froze for a moment before slowly shaking his head.

"You asked Botan to marry you?" he asked. "Again? And she actually said yes?"

Hiei tried not to let his annoyance show.

"I haven't asked her yet, no," he replied. "But I wanted to… Do this properly."

Koenma nodded.

"You're quite determined about this then?" he asked.

"Yes I am," Hiei said.

"I don't have a problem stamping your contracts, but I honestly think that you're wasting your time," Koenma warned, pressing his stamp into the inkpad a little more forcefully than seemed necessary, red ink welling up around the base of the stamp. "Botan is a ferry girl, and no amount of being around you, Yusuke or Kurama has made her any more… Demonlike."

Hiei waited for Koenma to continue, expecting him to explain what he had just said or to at least get on with stamping the papers, but instead he sat grinding his teeth, pushing the stamp into the ink and staring at the papers as though he hoped to somehow make them evaporate under the intensity of his glower.

""Demonlike"?" Hiei asked when he started to get bored of waiting for the prince to do or say something constructive.

"She's a nice girl," Koenma replied, picking up his stamp and looking at the underside of it as though he thought it might not be sufficiently inked. "She's a good girl… Do you understand, Hiei?"

"Of course I do," Hiei replied, resisting the urge to smile.

He understood the point Koenma was trying to make, but a part of him wanted to force the prince into spelling it out to him, if only to see just how flustered he became over having to do so.

"Do you?" Koenma asked, fixing him with a glare that came close to being quite authoritative.

"Yes, I do," Hiei said, feigning seriousness. "I always thought that was why Botan liked you so much – it was something that the two of you have in common: you're both very… "Good"…"

Koenma tried to maintain his stern aura, but Hiei distinctly saw his throat move as he swallowed hard and his face twitched almost imperceptibly.

"I just can't imagine you being satisfied with a woman who isn't… Like you," he said.

"Not like me?" Hiei asked, pretending to be surprised. "You just said that Botan is a nice and good girl, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did," Koenma replied.

"…Which would make me a nasty and bad boy?"

Hiei allowed himself to smile when Koenma's face twisted almost comically in fear and surprise and he began to blush.

"You're right, of course," Hiei added once he had savoured a few seconds of watching Botan's former boss squirm before him. "But you're wrong about our incompatibility as lovers. Very, very wrong."

Koenma swallowed again and looked down at the contracts, red ink dripping from his stamp onto the desk as he apparently tried to think of a way to avoid doing what he was meant to be doing – Hiei knew that, being a stickler for rules, he would hold himself to anything he stamped, and as soon as he had stamped the papers, he would lose the right to ever criticise Hiei's marriage to Botan.

"She was my favourite ferry girl," he said quietly.

"She's not a ferry girl any more," Hiei pointed out.

"I said "was"," Koenma snippily replied. "She was my best friend, and I was never sure that she would stay with me forever, but I had always hoped that when she did leave me, she would at least do it for a valid reason. After you came in here and filled her head with ideas about children and made her decide not to marry me, she decided to still retire from her ferry girl duties, but she didn't have a reason to. I don't know that she made the right decision or that she'll be happy in the future."

"I find your concern for Botan's welfare and happiness very reassuring. I understand that the safety and security of Botan's soul is important to you: you demonstrated that when you forgave her for deceiving the SDF during my time in the living world recently."

Koenma started to turn pale and his mouth drooped downwards: Hiei already knew that Botan had only been spared severe sentencing for her interference in spirit world business because of Yusuke, not Koenma. He kept his face neutral and let Koenma stew in his own conflicted feelings and guilt, before deciding to do to Koenma what Koenma had done to him after his first visit to another reality. He was going to make the prince feel like an idiot.

"I know that Botan thinks of you as family – like a little brother, I suppose," he said. "So let's not quarrel, since, by that logic, you and I will soon be family."

Koenma tried to hide just how sickened and fearful Hiei's words made him, but he failed rather miserably – though Hiei could not really criticise him on that front, as he was failing quite miserably at hiding his own true feelings at that moment too: his smile was becoming so wide that it was starting to hurt his face.

"We're not actually family, Botan and I," Koenma eventually said, stamping the contract that obliged him to allow Botan to become a spirit regardless of what she did during her 10 years as a human. "It's just… A metaphor. We're not actually related."

Hiei nodded but said nothing, instead touching a finger to the stamped contract and dragging it along Koenma's desk towards himself. He was not going to entrust either of the documents to spirit world. He intended to give them both to Botan instead, and a small, egotistical, part of him wondered if he would ever be able to convince her to frame the second one and hang it in a prominent position in the living room of the tree-house.

"So…" Koenma said, his stamp hovering over the second contract reluctantly. "You and I won't ever be related either."

Hiei considered saying something else sarcastic and guaranteed to make the prince blush but decided against it when he lowered his stamp to the contract, holding it there a little longer than was necessary and consequently smudging the seal slightly. Hiei quirked an eyebrow at the resultant mark before slowly lifting his eyes to Koenma.

"I trust that will still stand, even though you made a bit of a mess of it?" Hiei asked him, lowering his tone slightly to make it perfectly clear that he was not so much asking a question as he was issuing a threat.

"I'm a man of my word," Koenma replied.

"That's good enough for me," Hiei said, reaching for the contract.

He picked up the top of the page and started to pull it, stopping quickly when he realised that it was still pinned under the heel of Koenma's left hand. He looked up at the prince expectantly, and a strange look passed over his face, as though for a moment he intended to argue further or else have Hiei arrested for something absurd and improbable. But the moment passed, his face softened and he lifted his hand just enough for Hiei to snatch the contract from him.

"Perhaps we won't ever be family," he said, shaking the page to try to make the ink dry faster. "But I hope, for Botan's sake, that we can be friends."

Hiei lifted his eyes to Koenma's at his last word and let himself smile in the way he usually did before he killed something – and his actions had the desired effect, as Koenma seemed torn between disgust, fear and confusion.

"I trust that you'll come to our wedding, and visit us regularly," Hiei added.

"I'm a very busy man," Koenma replied, waving a hand at a pile of unfinished paperwork on his desk.

"I've seen you take weeks off of your duties to attend tournaments," Hiei reminded him. "If you can't take a single day off to attend the wedding of your favourite ferry girl, I would have to think that you weren't so much busy, as you were just plain rude, stubborn and selfish."

"You're calling me rude, stubborn and selfish?" Koenma echoed. "I don't know anyone more rude, stubborn or selfish than you, Hiei!"

"I didn't actually call you those things, I just said that refusing a kind invitation from an old friend would make you seem to be those things… But thanks for letting me know that's what you really think of me."

Hiei cleared his throat and purposefully looked up at the security camera in the corner of Koenma's office. Koenma followed his gaze to it, starting in alarm as though he had forgotten of its existence, despite having used some of its footage to embarrass Hiei quite recently. As he turned back to Hiei, Hiei made a point of pretending to dust something off of the ostentatious and already obvious spirit world medal on his chest, ensuring that Koenma was looking at it before stopping and looking up again.

"I'm sure I'll see you again soon," he said. "I'm covering a lot of Mukuro's duties at the moment, she's very busy with other matters, so maybe I'll see you over something political, but if not, I'm sure I'll see you at my wedding."

Koenma twitched but said nothing. Hiei stood up from his seat and held out his right hand across the desk. It was not exactly traditional to shake hands in spirit world or demon world culture, but Hiei wanted to make Koenma squirm as much as he possibly could, and he had learned that the best way to do just that was to force him into having to be civil. Koenma stared at his proffered hand for a long time before standing up and conceding to shake his hand. Hiei thought that the prince was trying to impress him because he was gripping his hand with what was possibly all of his meagre strength, a tactic he ought to have known better than to attempt on a demon of any class, as demons were invariably always physically stronger than humans or spirits, and probably even a demon as physically weak as one of the more silly ice maidens could have gripped Koenma's hand hard enough to break his fingers effortlessly. But Hiei was secure enough in his own strength and power that he did not need to resort to such petty tactics – and he felt a surprising amount of joy out of the smug satisfaction of watching Koenma strain himself pointlessly without retaliating.

And Hiei almost laughed when he saw Koenam suddenly falter at the realisation that, with his hand in Hiei's, his thumb was pushed against the head of the dormant Dragon of the Darkness Flame – Hiei had, quite deliberately, not bothered covering the dragon on his arm or the third eye on his forehead, mostly because he knew that leaving his most dangerous weapons exposed during what was meant to be a peaceful visit to spirit world would no doubt infuriate the Special Defence Force and Koenma. Koenma lessened his grip and tried to retrieve his hand but Hiei held onto him, being careful to only hold onto his hand without actually crushing it.

"Don't worry Koenma, it doesn't bite," he said, smirking darkly. "At least, not more than once and only then on my command."

Hiei almost thought that he could hear the sweat breaking out across Koenma's brow and, as much as he enjoyed finally having the upper hand over the pathetic fool, he did not want to scare him off entirely – partly because his objective that day had been to make sure that Koenma did not ignore and insult Monzan the way he had in the paradise reality and partly because that strange little part of his brain that now believed in the importance of diplomacy warned him that it would be wise to maintain a civil relationship with the leaders of spirit world. He released Koenma's hand and nodded his goodbye, turning to leave. As he started for the door the blue ogre hurried over and opened it for him, smiling a little more than was appropriate. He had been surprisingly helpful, but Hiei supposed that was because he was secretly sick of always being mistreated by Koenma, and he had actually enjoyed watching his boss squirm even more than Hiei had.

Once more the Special Defence Force – inexplicably in their entirety, as though they had nothing better to do – escorted Hiei back to the portal to demon world, where he gave them one last sarcastic smile before returning to his own world, feeling both immensely smug and yet strangely hollow. As he started back across no man's land, Hiei considered all the obstacles he had overcome in the last few weeks, and he realised that there was only one hurdle left in his path.

And, despite having found the courage, restraint and wit to coordinate rescuing Yukina and hiding her from spirit world, to bring peace to demon world and helping rebuild it after the damage caused by the war, and even to confront and form an acceptable alliance with spirit world, Hiei had no idea how he was going to actually convince Botan to marry him.

He supposed that he had laid the groundwork with the speech he had delivered to her before he had left the living world, but that had been his intended farewell speech, and, despite it having been quite a nice way to tell her how he felt, he had not made contact with her since that day, despite more than four months having past and several opportunities to do so having been available to him.

He decided he would start the same way he had after his return to his own reality from his second visit to paradise: with his sister Yukina. She had asked him to visit her in the living world, and he supposed that was as good an opening as any. He would first flaunt his medal to Mukuro and her new lover, brag a little bit about great he was and how Koenma was now putty in his hands and then he would return to the valley on the pretence of checking on the refugees and Masuyo, but secretly only to seek out Yukina and accompany her back to the living world.

And, as it had been some months since he had last been in the living world, Hiei wondered if anything there would be different at all.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** Silly Hiei, of course things in the living world are going to be different! (And the lunacy of this fic commences…) Hiei returns to the valley and learns some things about the ice maidens that give him a sense of closure (and a sense of irony), he goes to Yusuke's tower to visit him and he goes to Shura's temple in search of Kurama, but receives surprises on both fronts. He finally goes back to the living world where several quite absurd things await him… **Chapter 50 – Change the World**

 **A/N:** Sadly this fic just gets more ridiculous until it reaches its conclusion (which is oh-so-close now).


	50. Change the World

**Recap:** Hiei convinced Mukuro to accept him marrying Botan and he even managed to convince Koenma to accept their union, and with that out the way, it was time for him to return to the living world (for the inevitably "snowball effect" of all his good deeds…)

* * *

 **Chapter 50: Change the World**

Hiei's patience was wearing thin. It had been enough of a test of his patience for him to go to spirit world, not to kill any of the Special Defence Force, to tolerate King Enma's bullshit and then to deal with Koenma's immature ranting without snapping at him or slapping him through a wall: he did not need to spend the rest of that day being paraded around like some sort of trophy. After arriving at the valley and setting out to search for Yukina, he had promptly been kidnapped by a gaggle of ice maidens who had insisted on showing him their children (including that one fire demon who looked far too much like Shuichi for comfort) and to the refugees in and around the camp.

He should, he thought, just shove them off and tell them to leave him alone, since it was frankly quite pitiful and embarrassing that an S class demon like himself should be abducted by a bunch of barely D class weaklings, but his indulgence of their little parade was, in a small way, his own acknowledgement of a dark little secret he was harbouring: Yukina may well have been ecstatic that the ice maidens had overthrown the elders, started mixing with society and decided to accept the fire demons born into their clan, but she was not nearly as pleased about the changes as Hiei himself was.

Secretly Hiei had, for as long as he could remember, always wanted the women in the ice village to say that they hated their way of life and that rejecting men was wrong, because he had always known that the day that happened was the day that he could finally stop blaming himself for his ejection from the ice village at birth. He had always thought that he had been cast out because he was evil and because he had behaved badly, he had always blamed himself and felt that he deserved to be rejected by his own mother, but a childish part of him had always hoped that was not true, a hope he had felt most keenly on the occasions that he had paused to look at his hirui stone and consider how it had been formed and passed onto him. He had mostly been disgusted with himself during his childhood, something not helped by the way the bandits who raised him had treated him – they used him for his strength and then cast him out just as the ice maidens had as soon as he became too much for them to deal with. Hiei had been so disgusted with himself he had chosen to train with a sword instead of using his fire powers, because every time he did use a flame-based attack, he was reminded why his own family had hated him so much, not to mention that swordsmanship was still considered to be something of an honourable way to battle, and he had always fooled himself into believing that wielding a sword gave his life a degree of honour it otherwise lacked.

Hiei's self-loathing had faded over the years as he had grown more powerful and he had found other priorities in his life, but it had never truly gone away, and he had always felt at least a little bitter about it, and he knew that – once again – Mukuro has seen through that part of him and been right in her assessment that his fear of rejection had always stopped him from getting too close or too involved with anyone or anything.

Closure was a strange thing, he thought as he once more came across the ice maiden and her red-haired son. He paused to watch as she and two of her friends from the ice village fussed over the child, torn between wondering if his own mother could ever have been that way with him and simply being glad that the child he was watching would never know the pain that he had.

And Hiei promptly broke out of contemplative mode when the boy accidentally set fire to one of the ice maiden's hair.

She screamed and the boy's mother quickly grabbed up a conveniently nearby blanket and threw it over her head, smothering the flames. Hiei waited anxiously as the other two women lifted the blanket from their friend's head, quietly sighing with relief when he saw that she was not hurt. Unfortunately, however, she had lost a large chunk of her hair, a few blackened, frazzled ends remaining at one side of her neck where her hair had once flowed down her back as it still did over her other shoulder.

"Oh dear!" the boy's mother gasped. "I'm so sorry!"

"He didn't hurt me," the burned woman replied, tugging at the burnt ends of her hair and peering down at them. "It was an accident."

"Hey, it's not bad actually!" the third ice maiden said. "You should cut the rest of your hair to that length – it really suits you!"

"You think?"

"Sure!"

Hiei did not know it he was amused or just downright baffled as he watched the mother of the boy pick him up and tell him not to use his powers like that again – but then follow her admonishment up by showering him with kisses – whilst the third woman somehow managed to find a pair of scissors and began cutting off the burnt parts of their friend's hair and making something of a game of the whole affair.

Despite not knowing how to feel or what to think about what he had just witnessed, Hiei was at least sure of one thing: life in demon world was never going to be the same again.

He had also learned recently that, thanks to the antics of some of the younger and more foolish girls from the ice village, hirui stones were no longer such a valuable commodity, which again made the ice maidens safer. Apparently some of the young girls had made a hobby out of pulling each other's hair to make themselves cry and then trying to buy extortionate things from other demons to make themselves wealthy, a trick the rest of demon world had quickly caught on to, and society was rapidly reaching a point where nobody cared about the stones the ice maidens cried, which was almost beyond absurd.

Hiei walked on, nodding at Masuyo as he passed her helping a trio of men from Yomi's – or rather, Shura's – territory to pack up their belongings. More and more of the refugees were returning to their original homes, including those who had lost their homes, as the border patrol became more visible and the efforts to repair the damage done by the war became more apparent. Many lives had been lost during the war, but, if their behaviour in the valley was anything to go by, Hiei had a worrying suspicion that the ice maidens were going to play a key role in helping repopulate demon world, and after another generation or two had risen, the losses would probably no longer be noticeable.

And he supposed that everyone – especially the ice maidens – had learned some valuable lessons about working together and tolerating others, so perhaps the war had not been such a terrible thing after all.

After walking around the entire settlement in the valley, Hiei approached the driver of a border patrol vehicle that was being loaded with passengers to ask if he had seen Yukina: at which point Hiei found out that Yukina had left the valley shortly after Hiei had that morning, and returned to the living world. Hiei contained his frustration at having wasted the best part of two hours in the valley and started to run off with the intention of heading to the living world in pursuit of his sister: but as he moved out of the hilly landscape around the valley he noticed Yusuke's tower on the horizon, and he decided that, since he was in the area anyway, he might as well go and see if Yusuke was there.

* * *

Arriving at the gates of Yusuke's tower felt no less unsettling than it had when Hiei had done so in the paradise reality. In his own reality, he had never visited the tower on a social call before, and doing so now made the experience all the more bizarre. Many of the demons milling around outside of the tower still gave him suspicious looks and tensed when he neared them as though they saw his arrival as a portent of another war, but many more of the demons watched him out of simple curiosity and awe, with some of the braver and more powerful ones even bothering to nod at him or else call out a greeting. Hiei looked their way when they gestured to him but did no more, continuing to the main entrance of the tower intent on asking the guards where he could find Yusuke: but unfortunately the doormen fell under the category of demons who still distrusted and feared Hiei, as they fled before he reached them. With a sigh of annoyance, Hiei continued into the tower proper and began looking about for Yusuke or anyone who might know where he was.

Hiei had not seen Yusuke since the one visit he had received from the Mazoku shortly after the end of the war when he had imparted the news that he had convinced the leaders of spirit world to spare Botan and the others for their involvement in breaking the Kakai Barrier, distracting the Special Defence Force and taking a demon back to the living world. At that time, he had not bothered to ask Yusuke what his plans were, because he had assumed that Yusuke – and Kurama – would be doing exactly what he had been doing for the last few months: tidying up the mess the war had made and trying to re-establish some sort of semblance of society to their world. He could not imagine what else either of them might have decided to do, but he had found it odd that he had not seen or heard from either of them, directly or indirectly. The border patrol guards never saw them around demon world, the refugees in the valley had never seen them and Hiei himself had never encountered them in any of his ventures.

Demon world was a big place, but it was not so big that two of its most famous faces and most powerful warriors could vanish without a trace.

After some time of walking aimlessly through the corridors of Yusuke's tower, Hiei eventually found Hokushin, who looked surprised and mildly irritated to see him.

"Was I expecting a visit from you?" he asked.

Hiei tried not to look as insulted as he felt.

"No," he said. "I didn't come here to see you, I came to see Yusuke."

Hokushin made a small noise that could have been a snort of laughter, but it was too quiet and his face was too expressionless to confirm that.

"Yusuke took a sabbatical, didn't you hear?" he asked. "I thought everybody knew. Mukuro was certainly informed. Yusuke is still the ruler of this kingdom, but he wanted to take a break, so he's dumped all of his shi–I mean he's delegated all his responsibilities to me for the foreseeable future. If you want to talk business, you need to make an appointment with me. If it's something big, I'll need to consult with Yusuke, but he really doesn't want to be disturbed where he is."

"And where is that?" Hiei asked.

"I'm not allowed to disclose that information."

Hiei narrowed his eyes, and, as he glared at the shape-shifting demon, he considered his options: he could try using his jagan eye to read Hokushin's mind, he could demand an answer on the grounds that he was not there on demon world business or he could threaten to kill Hokushin and demand an answer without bothering to give a reason why he needed it.

"Forget it," he said instead. "I'll ask Kurama, he'll know where Yusuke is."

Hiei turned around and started to walk away and Hokushin turned and walked off in the opposite direction: but Hiei did not miss the last remark Yusuke's second-in-command made before they moved out of sight of each other entirely.

"Pfft, good luck with that."

* * *

Hiei partially cheated his way across demon world – stowing himself aboard a border patrol vehicle for part of the way, being sure to keep himself separate and concealed from the other passengers to forego the migraine of having more ice maidens fuss over him – and he ran the rest, which left him feeling quite exhausted and quite hungry. He hoped that he might be able to convince Kurama to invite him in for a late lunch when he eventually arrived at Shura's headquarters.

Shura's headquarters – unlike Yusuke's and similarly to Mukuro's – had been damaged by the war and was still undergoing repairs, but thanks to its generally post-modern appearance, the whole place looked virtually back to normal despite the ongoing preservation activities. Again, Hiei found himself being met with a mixture of suspicion, curiosity and admiration as he approached the main doors. This time, however, only one of the doormen fled, the other greeting him formally.

"I need to see Kurama," Hiei bluntly told him.

"…So why did you come here?" the guard asked.

Hiei bit back the urge to slap the guard over the head for his stupidity.

"Kurama," he said slowly. "The fox demon who is an expert at controlling deadly demon plants. Seven feet tall, long silver hair, big fuck off fox ears on his head… Where is he?"

It was the guard's turn to look peeved then, and by the way he shifted his weight and ground his teeth Hiei could tell that he was holding himself back from a violent outburst just as Hiei had before him.

"I know who Kurama is," he said through a sigh. "But like I already said: you won't find him here."

"Then where can I find him?" Hiei asked, talking deliberately slowly as though speaking to someone especially stupid – which he supposed he was.

"I don't know," the guard tightly replied.

"Then get me Shura," Hiei said.

"He doesn't know either," the guard said. "Nobody does. Actually, we all thought that you knew, because nobody here knows where he went or why. The last time any of us saw him was when he was signing treaties with you and your buddies to end the war. Nobody has seen or heard from him since."

Hiei frowned, but the confident look on the guard's face combined with the idea that he was wasting time making small talk with an idiot stopped him from spending too long wondering if what he had just been told was true or not. Disappearing was something Kurama was famous for doing, and Hiei already knew that he would never manage to find him with his jagan eye, and so he did not even bother attempting to. Instead he turned from Shura's temple and ran off again, this time deciding to just go to the living world and see Yukina.

At least things in the living world were always predictable, he thought to himself.

* * *

Hiei – by chance, he was sure – arrived in the living world on the roof of a building facing the apartment block Shuichi and his mother lived in. And whilst Hiei considered Shuichi to be an idiot and a prime example of everything that was wrong with the human race, he decided that he should probably pay him a visit, if only to check that he had not said or done anything else ridiculous lately and landed himself back in an insane asylum.

Or spirit world prison.

Hiei hopped down balconies and window-ledges until he reached the street below, before crossing the road and approaching the building. He pressed the button on the intercom that he used to once use long ago to call Kurama out, waiting patiently for an answer. When none came he pressed it again and leaned back, looking up at the windows above him to see if there were any signs of life in the apartment he sought: an action he promptly regretted when an irate elderly man staggered out onto the balcony, yelled at him for waking him up by pressing his buzzer and threw a shoe at him.

Hiei side-stepped effortlessly out of the way, looking down at the discarded shoe and then up at the man who had thrown it, stepping aside again as he threw his other shoe.

"What the hell is wrong with you, boy?" the man yelled. "Can't you read?"

Hiei tilted his head slightly.

"What are you doing in that apartment?" he called up to the man. "That's the Minamino apartment, you don't belong there!"

The man made a strange noise of frustration and then began waving a fist at Hiei – a pathetic threat from such a frail old creature, especially when he was five floors up and far too far away for it to be a threat that he could actually carry out.

"The Minaminos don't live here any more, you stupid boy!" he shouted. "They moved out two weeks ago! Probably to get away from juvenile delinquents you!"

Hiei snarled at the man and then walked on, ignoring the insults he continued to yell after him. It was no great loss that he had not managed to visit Shuichi, but he did wonder where the fool had gone to. Ahead of him, at the end of the street, he could see Maya's plant shop, and he intended to stop there for a bit – partly to check that she was still alive, since he was indebted to her for her assistance in rescuing Yukina, but mostly to scrounge some food from her.

As he passed another shop nearby Maya's, Hiei noticed a strange sign in the shop window and something grey and fluffy prominently on display: but as he had never cared for human eccentricities, he chose to ignore it – rather wrongly, as he would shortly realise – and walked on to Maya's shop.

Inside the shop Maya was at the counter dusting the glass jar over her famous black velvet nox orchid, and at the sound of his entry she turned to smile at him, her smile turning into an almost ludicrous grin when she recognised him.

"Hiei!" she cried, dropping her feather duster and skipping out from behind the counter. "It's so good to see you here! We were all worried that you wouldn't ever come back!"

"Hn," he answered.

She stopped in front of him and smiled at his response.

"I see you're still as charming and talkative as ever," she said.

She was mocking him, but he decided to ignore it.

"Yukina invited me here," he said instead. "And I thought I should… Check on everyone else here. I tried to visit Shuichi, but he doesn't live in that apartment along the street any more."

"Oh no!" Maya said, almost too cheerfully. "He lives with me now! Didn't you know that?"

"Yes, of course I did," Hiei sarcastically replied. "That was why I just went to his old address and let an old man pummel me with his shoes."

"I suppose he just forgot to tell you," Maya said with a shrug. "He was still living there until a couple of weeks ago, but once his mother bought another house, he decided to move in with me. His mother's really doing well out of the new business, you should see her now! They had to sell the franchise, because it just got too much for them, but they're still managing the main store in the centre of the city."

Hiei blinked. Something was wrong. Maya was talking and he was not understanding a word that she was saying. It also seemed odd that Yusuke and Kurama had disappeared in demon world. And it was odd that Shuichi and his mother had moved away so suddenly.

"I'm in another reality again, amn't I?" he asked, looking about himself suspiciously.

Nothing in the shop looked amiss, but Hiei lifted up his shirt and checked himself for any cross-shaped wounds just to be sure. Something was definitely amiss, and a suddenly sickening feeling in his gut told him he was in another reality. Or it was a dream. Or a nightmare.

"Still can't keep your shirt on, I see."

Hiei's head snapped up at the sound of the voice at the back of the room, his hands still holding his shirt up around his armpits. What he saw made him even more certain that he was no longer in his own reality.

"I must say Hiei, I expected to see you here in the living world much sooner. I'm a little disappointed that it has taken you so long to get here, but I suppose your timing is not entirely bad, since Kuwabara and Yukina have just returned to this city themselves."

It was Shuichi – and yet not. It was Shuichi's body, it was Shuichi's face, and it was even Shuichi's voice: but it was not Shuichi. He looked and sounded exactly the same as he had done when he had been dancing around the ice village after convincing the ice maidens to burn their bras, but he had changed somehow, and it was not a minor change either.

"Th-that's…" Hiei began, struggling to find the words – tactfully or otherwise – to express what he was thinking. "How is this possible?"

Maya tilted her head at him curiously and Shuichi waved a hand at her, at which she nodded and walked to the back of the shop again, disappearing through a door there to the area beyond. Hiei watched her go before turning to Shuichi, who was slowly approaching him. Hiei dropped his shirt and took a wary step back, stumbling into a pile of half-price plastic plant pots and almost destroying a display of colourful daisies.

"You seem surprised. Surely you must have known that I would take this path."

Hiei shook his head.

"Perhaps I did take this path a little abruptly, but one could also argue that I was made to leave my life here in the living world rather abruptly three years ago, and I've always been keen to return to it at the earliest possible opportunity."

"Kurama?" Hiei finally managed to ask.

"Yes?"

"But… What did you do with the other one?"

"…What?"

"Shuichi! Where did you put him? Or… Is he still in there with you?"

Hiei eyed over the person before him warily, still feeling confused by the facts but now realising that there was no denying them: somehow, beyond all logic and reason, Kurama had returned to the body of Shuichi Minamino.

"You look like you're afraid of me," he said, before smiling slightly. "Surely not: you were entirely unafraid of facing me unarmed in my full-demon form, surely seeing me in a human body once more should be almost laughable for you."

Hiei shook his head.

"No?" Kurama asked.

"I don't understand why," Hiei said. "Well, I mostly don't really understand how, but I don't think that I want to know about that. Just tell me why."

"I believe I already did tell you why, Hiei," Kurama replied. "I never wanted to leave this world and this life, least of all to become a savage, which was exactly what did become of me when I returned to demon world and the war. I am immensely glad to be back here, and I think this works better for not only me, but also for Shuichi, my mother and even Maya, too."

"…So he is still in there?" Hiei asked.

Kurama gave Hiei a stern look, one that Hiei had never seen Shuichi use, giving him further proof that Kurama was indeed back in control of Shuichi's body.

"Since you are here, should I assume that you will be attending dinner this evening?" Kurama asked him.

"I'm hungry now," Hiei replied, remembering then that he had yet to eat that day.

Kurama gave him a slightly deflated look but shortly covered it with a small smile.

"It's good to see you here again," he said. "I'm glad that you did decide to join us, and I hope that you'll continue to visit and not isolate yourself from us again."

Hiei nodded. He knew that he really ought to say something, but his brain had gone blank and he did not trust himself to speak when that happened.

"Have you been in contact with anyone from the living world since our meeting in Gandara?" Kurama asked him.

"No," Hiei said.

Kurama smiled a little too enthusiastically then for Hiei's liking.

"There have been a few changes around here," he explained. "Perhaps you should familiarise yourself with them, lest they shock you. For the rest of us it has been a gradual evolution, but for you, it may be a little overwhelming to try to come to terms with all at once."

Hiei nodded.

"Something feels strange in here," he said. "But maybe that was just you, back in that body, confusing my senses."

"Is this your first stop since arriving back in the living world?" Kurama asked.

"I tried to visit your apartment first, but Maya already told me that you don't live there any more."

"Yes, that's correct. My mother has become something of a successful businesswoman in the last few weeks, and she has moved to another part of the city. She went into business with Shizuru, Kuwabara's sister, and they've had a remarkable amount of success. The nature of their business is a little… Obtuse for my tastes, I must admit, and perhaps will be for yours too. In fact, you may well just find it downright ridiculous, but, as the old saying goes, "may hay while the sun shines", and the sun is certainly shining very brightly right now."

"Why would I care that your human mother and Kuwabara's bossy sister work together?"

"Oh, you'll see. Which reminds me, there is something else I want to say to you, though I must confess, I'm not entirely sure where this thought came from, so perhaps it was something you discussed with Shuichi: it's about your visits to other realities."

"Go on…"

"I have this urge to tell you that, although you didn't visit every possibility in your travels, I think there was a reason you never visited the "utopia" reality. Does this make sense so far?"

"Rather worryingly yes, it does…"

"Oh good. Well, my theory is that you didn't find the utopia because it doesn't actually exist. And neither does the dystopia, and so this reality was never really as bad as you thought it was, because actually, any path our lives follow could lead to a dystopia or a utopia, but we always have the power to change it for the better. Or the worse. Do you understand that at all?"

"Absolutely."

"Good. I would like to come with you – if only to see the look on your face when you catch up with the others – but I'm needed here. I suggest you pay a visit to Yukimura Restaurant next, my good friend."

Hiei forced a smile, finding the idea of Shuichi and Kurama once more being the same person quite disturbing: both had said that they wanted to be together once more, which made it sort of like two people who needed to be together, and yet they were almost the same person anyway, and they had shared memories and ideas and-

"I'm going to Yukimura Restaurant," Hiei announced, if only to drown out the sound of his own brain trying to make sense of Kurama's strange decision to return to the body of Shuichi Minamino.

Kurama smiled and nodded at him and Hiei returned the gesture and then gladly left the shop again and started to walk briskly across the city, hoping that, by walking amongst humans, he could distract himself from going over the complexities of Kurama's life in his mind. As he walked, he vaguely saw things on the periphery of his vision, and whilst he would usually ignore human things, these particular human things were mostly grey and blue – the colours worn by the soldiers of the spirit world Special Defence Force – and he found himself glancing at them as he passed, his glances gradually turning into more prolonged, curious gazes, which shortly turned into dumbfounded stares.

Almost every shop Hiei passed on his way to Yukimura Restaurant had displays of strange grey fluffy objects and pictures of strange blue designs and signs that said a variety of disturbing things and made a range of worrying suggestions, but all contained one word in common: Urameshi.

As he got closer to his destination, Hiei started to notice people wearing the strange grey fluffy things on their heads. And some of those same people had painted the blue markings onto their faces and arms. One human male emerged from a shop with his hair dyed and styled to look like he was wearing one of the grey fluffy things on his head, and his entire body was covered in the blue markings, which had apparently been permanently tattooed onto his body.

Hiei paused. The feeling of something being amiss had left him only to replaced by the feeling that something was familiar somehow. It was not a sense of déjà vu, more just the feeling of something being the same as something else.

He shook his head and walked on, trying to block out the crazy humans around him celebrating their stupid fads. It was mid-afternoon already, well past lunchtime and still too early for dinner, and so Hiei expected to find Yukimura Restaurant devoid of life. Although, he thought to himself, it was often devoid of life during lunch and dinner periods too, but typically it managed to attract at least one table of customers during a meal time, though it was invariably always empty between times. It had been constantly quite busy throughout the day in the paradise reality, and especially so at dinner times, with people often queuing for tables, but that was because Yusuke had still worked there, and, as Hiei himself could attest to, Yusuke was something of a genius in the kitchen.

Perhaps it had been cruel to call him a scullery maid, he mused.

Hiei began to tell himself that he would never belittle Yusuke's secret skill in that manner again, but as he rounded a corner and Yukimura Restaurant came into his line of sight his mind went blank. Actually, it felt more like his brain had exploded.

It was 3:30 in the afternoon, and every table in Yukimura Restaurant was full. And there were people queuing at the counter. And the queue ran the full length of the counter, around the perimeter of the restaurant floor and out onto the street. And Yukimura Restaurant was a lot bigger than Hiei remembered it to be – apparently it had spilled over into the two buildings either side of it, and now contained almost four times as many tables. But still it was full.

Hiei pushed himself to continue, unable to avoid noticing that the concentration of people with fluffy grey wigs got greater the closer he got to his destination. As he neared the restaurant he could see six people dressed in white dashing about trying to serve customers, but none of them were Keiko or her parents: which was odd, because Hiei had thought that they were so hard up for staff, they could not even afford to hire new cleaner, least of all six new catering staff. Getting close to the restaurant entrance was virtually impossible and would have involved dealing with far too many humans who were dressed too unusually for Hiei's liking, so he carefully navigated his way around the back of the building, intending to pick his way in from there and hopefully find Keiko and demand that she explain what was happening.

At the back of the restaurant, Hiei saw something else he now wanted to kick Kurama for not warning him about. Keiko's father and a small handful of humans in fluffy grey wigs were sitting around an old restaurant table smoking, and chatting to each other and at the head of the table sat someone the humans were apparently modelling themselves on.

"Yusuke?" Hiei blurted out.

Yusuke turned to him and broke into a grin, waving at him and beckoning him to join them. Hiei was not keen to approach a table of idiots and so he merely slid a few steps closer and nodded a greeting to them. Apparently sensing his apprehension Yusuke excused himself to the others and stepped out from behind the table.

Seeing Kurama back in the body of Shuichi – after having spent some time getting to know them as separate individuals – had been quite a surreal and disturbing experience for Hiei, but seeing Yusuke in his full-demon glory and living as a human was arguably even more bizarre. He was still bearing the blue markings on his skin – the same ones those humans around the city were trying to replicate with make-up or tattoos – his eyes were still a pale gold and his hair was still a shocking silver, though he had cut it short, and it sat in erratic spikes about his head – the same shape and colour as the fluffy grey wigs those humans around the city were wearing.

"Hey, you little asshole, where the hell have you been all this time?"

Hiei tried to shirk back but was too late and Yusuke's arm landed heavily across his shoulders.

"Where have I been?" Hiei echoed indignantly whilst trying to squirm out of Yusuke's one-armed embrace. "Where the fuck have you been? And what is all this madness?"

"I've been right here," Yusuke replied, looking at him as though he had been the one to say something stupid. "I came back here as soon as I could. Once I'd convinced Koenma to let Keiko and the others go, I handed things over to Hokushin and came here. And we've all been waiting for you – what have you been doing all this time? I mean, apart from your usual hobbies of sleeping in trees, shadow fencing and practising witty put-downs in front of a mirror?"

"…I don't practise anything in front of a mirror!"

"I was actually just about to head off and meet Keiko, why don't you come with me? It's on your way back home anyway."

"I only just got here."

"I'm guessing you don't intend to stay long though, am I right?"

"…I don't know…"

Feeling confused and dazed, Hiei merely stumbled along at first when Yusuke bid his table of friends goodbye and started walking on, keeping his arm around Hiei's shoulders and therefore dragging him along with him.

"Why are these people imitating you?" Hiei asked as they reached the street again and people began calling out to Yusuke, who merely waved politely in reply.

"Funny story," Yusuke said. "I came back here and took my old job back working with Keiko's parents, and business in the restaurant picked up pretty quickly once I got back on the job."

"Hn, I can believe that, your cooking is superior to most."

"Whoa, easy with the compliments there shorty, you almost sound like you mean 'em!"

"Just shut-up and get to the point."

"…Which do you want me to do: shut-up or finish explaining all this?"

"Just… Explain!"

"Alright then. Well, business picked up, and one day Kurama's mom made a wig for one of the regulars – he was just a kid – because he said he wanted to be like me when he grew up. The next day, we had half the local school over here asking where they could buy the wigs, so Kurama's mom kept making them, and we sold them here and let her keep the profits. That worked for about a week before Shizuru suggested they start selling the wigs to local shops, and for some reason, it started a new trend around here. I think Shizuru and Mrs Minamino are making more money than I am!"

"It's stupid."

"Yeah, Shizuru thought so too, but she said that if people are stupid enough to pay for something, then she was smart enough to take their money."

Hiei groaned and Yusuke laughed.

"You wouldn't think it was so crazy if you'd been here when it all happened," he said. "Everyone else was here. Have you seen Kurama? He's back here too."

"Yes, I know," Hiei said flatly. "He's been reunited with Shuichi: the terrible… Duo of… Never mind. I really just came to see Yukina because she invited me here."

"Oh, you came for dinner, huh?" Yusuke asked. "Yeah, we're all having a little dinner tonight to celebrate Kuwabara and Yukina coming back here. I gotta admit, it's been weird seeing Kuwabara again – I'd forgotten how strange he looks with a beard."

"He grew it to hide how ugly his chin is," Hiei grumbled.

"Careful what you say there, three eyes! I said exactly the same thing to Yukina and she almost froze me to death – she thinks he has a beautiful, manly chin, and she doesn't like people insulting it."

"Hn, she only sees his inner beauty."

Yusuke's arm finally fell from Hiei's shoulders, and Hiei was so relieved at its absence he walked on gladly, only realising that Yusuke had stopped and fallen behind him when he started running to catch him up again.

"Did you just say that Kuwabara has inner beauty?" Yusuke asked him, grinning in a way that warned Hiei he was going to suffer a teasing regardless of the answer he gave.

"Is it even worth me saying no?" he asked.

Yusuke shook his head.

"I heard you say it Hiei," he said. "Your secret's finally out. And besides, you can't deny it anyway. I know all about how much you like Kuwabara. I heard all about how you lived with him and helped him get his memories back, you helped him win that contract and you even told your precious little sister that you were happy for her to be with Kuwabara. Beauty and the beast. The fox and the hound."

"The fox and the hound?"

"Well, your sister is a fox and Kuwabara… Is a hound."

"…That doesn't make any sense."

"Aw, it's good to have you back, you little bastard! I think I actually missed you, you know that? And hey, I think everyone else here in the living world missed you too! Kuwabara asked for you first when he got back here, and Keiko's asked after you a few times. She'll be glad to see you again."

Yusuke stopped walking and nodded his head at something, and Hiei stopped at his side, turning to see what he was referring to.

And what he saw made him wonder if the surprises were ever going to stop that day.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** No, they're not going to stop Hiei! He is surprised to see Keiko, and even more surprised to see her with Yusuke, after which he goes to see Yukina and suffers a few more surprises before finally going to the tree-house, where he is once more reunited with Botan… **Chapter 51: River of Life**

 **A/N:** Nearly there, and probably just as well, because my brain is leaving this fic. I intend to post my own personal critical review of this piece once I'm done – because I failed to write this story the way I imagined it in my mind, and I want it to stand as a lesson to remind me the importance of a tighter, better planned storyboard.

Until then, thanks for the reviews and continued support.


	51. River of Life

**Recap:** Life had changed in demon world – especially for the ice maidens – and when he went looking for Kurama and Yusuke, Hiei realised that life had changed for both of them too, and things in the living world were quite different.

* * *

 **Chapter 51: River of Life**

Hiei was starting to wonder whether coming to the living world had been a good or a bad decision. If it had been a bad decision, he supposed that it was really only bad because he had left it so long – he ought to have visited there much sooner after the end of the war in demon world. And if it had been a good decision, he had to wonder at his own sanity, since everything in the living world was so different that it might as well be the living world of another reality.

In fact, Hiei was still not entirely sure that was not true, and the urge to check himself for any cross-shaped wounds was getting harder to control.

Yusuke had taken him to a school. Hiei knew that it was a school because there were young humans everywhere in uniforms and a glaring banner over the gates that informed anyone within a half mile radius that the school would be undergoing an upgrade during the summer break, designed and facilitated by one of the school's former pupils and local success story, Kazuma Kuwabara. Well, Hiei told himself, at least the orange-haired idiot was keeping himself busy and continuing to earn a wage. But the sign was not what left Hiei feeling overwhelmed by the apparent changes in the living world, rather it was the fact that Yusuke was watching the main doors into the school with something of an anxious look as though he was expecting something relevant to his own life to emerge from the building.

"Remind me why we're here?" Hiei asked him, trying to ignore the group of teenage girls barely taller than he was that were loitering nearby and giggling in a most infuriating way.

"Keiko," Yusuke replied.

"…Right," Hiei said. "She went back to school?"

"Yeah," Yusuke said. "She didn't need to work at the restaurant any more after I got back, and now Keiko's mom has taken early retirement too because they can afford to hire staff to help run the place."

"…Isn't Keiko a little too old to come back here?"

Yusuke gave Hiei a questioning look, which only served to confuse Hiei further. But neither of them remained that way for long as they shortly noticed someone waving to them from the school doors, and they both turned in that direction. Yusuke smiled and waved back and Hiei almost fell over. It was Keiko – which in itself was not surprising, as Yusuke had said that Keiko would emerge from the school eventually – but she barely looked like she had the last time Hiei had laid eyes on her. She was dressed almost elegantly, her hair looked different and her entire demeanour had changed.

She looked quite attractive, Hiei thought; and that was something he had never expected to think about Keiko Yukimura, since she had not even seemed that way to him in the reality he had visited where she had actually been his lover and tried to dress and act in a way she thought would please him.

"She's a teacher here," Hiei concluded aloud.

"Of course!" Yusuke said. "You didn't think she was a student, did you? Gees Hiei, I know you don't know much about human world culture, but surely even you know better than that?"

Hiei said no more, but inwardly he was musing at the irony of the situation: Yusuke barely looked human, and yet somehow he had returned to the living world, and turned his own life – and, by proxy, Keiko's life – into the sort of life he had enjoyed in the paradise reality.

Kuwabara and Yukina, Kurama and Maya and now Yusuke and Keiko: they were all turning into the paradise versions of themselves. They were not exactly as they had been in the paradise reality – Yukina was free of regret, Kurama's human mother and Kuwabara's sister had apparently become career-women and Yusuke had started a trend in the city that had made Yukimura restaurant slightly more successful – but it was close.

Actually, it was almost better.

That was strange.

But not as strange as the sight of Keiko boldly walking up to Yusuke, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him almost explicitly without the slightest care that they were standing amongst a myriad of high school students and teachers, most of whom were blatantly staring in their direction.

Hiei did not realise that he was staring at them himself until they separated, and, after a moment of gazing lovingly into Yusuke's eyes Keiko turned to him and smiled cheerfully.

"Hi Hiei!" she greeted him.

"Other people saw what you just did, you know," he answered her.

She screwed up her face as though he had just said something absurd.

"Yeah?" she said.

"Doesn't that bother you?" he asked.

"No!" she said, looking at him as though he was the one who was acting strangely. "Why would it?"

Hiei turned to Yusuke who smiled down at him and gave a small nod of his head. He then put his arm around Keiko's shoulders and she put an arm around his waist, cuddling into him.

"Did you have a good day?" she asked him.

"It was pretty much the same as always," he said as they started to walk off together.

Hiei stayed where he was, watching them go, his eyes doubling in size as Keiko slipped a hand into the back pocket of Yusuke's jeans in what was almost an erotic gesture.

"Hey!" Hiei protested. "You were never like that in paradise! You wouldn't even hold his hand if you thought someone else was looking! Your repression was the downfall of your happiness!"

Yusuke and Keiko turned to each other and started muttering questions they presumably thought Hiei would not be able to hear as they continued walking and he remained behind.

"You got any idea what the hell he's talking about?" Yusuke asked.

"I think he's talking about some other reality he visited, Shuichi said something about it," Keiko replied. "Apparently his life was really great there and he's obsessed with it now."

"Oh… And it was a place where we didn't even hold hands?"

"I guess so."

Yusuke looked back over his shoulder, giving Hiei an almost angered glare.

"Hey, half pint!" he yelled back at Hiei. "That other reality was maybe alright for you, but by the sounds of things it wasn't much of a paradise for any of the rest of us!"

Hiei did not answer – mostly because he had no idea how to – instead simply watching Yusuke and Keiko walk on, looking worryingly much happier than they ever had in any other reality he had ever visited. Maybe that made sense – which was possibly even more worrying. In all the other realities where they had happily been together, Yusuke had grown bored of Keiko and Keiko was still uptight and repressed, but in this reality, they had been separated and forced to realise how much they missed each other and that their lives really were not any better apart, and now that they had been reunited, Yusuke appreciated Keiko and Keiko no longer worried about hiding her feelings, because she now knew not to take anything for granted.

Hiei did not know if he was pleased or seriously pissed off: everyone else's lives were arguably better now in his own reality than they had been in that other reality, but his life was – although much improved – still nowhere near as sublime as it had been in that other reality.

Although it had been quite nice to get his revenge on Koenma, and that was something he could probably never have managed in any other reality.

Hiei looked back at Yusuke and Keiko, who were almost out of sight already. They did not seem to be expecting him to follow them and he was keen to get back to Yukina, so he turned away from them and started to run, only stopping as he neared the city limits and it occurred to him that he was, on instinct, going to Genkai's temple, when actually it was more likely that Yukina would still be with Kuwabara in his apartment.

Hiei took a moment to search out his sister with his jagan eye, expecting to find her petting that ugly animal or else playing with his cat. He located her very quickly – years of honing himself onto the unique pattern of her demon energy made it an effortless task – but what he saw made very little sense. He closed his jagan eye and opened his own eyes again, the sight of more idiots walking around in Urameshi wigs reminding him that, frankly, nothing else around him made sense, so perhaps what he had seen had not been so absurd after all.

Hiei opened his third eye again and again he sought out Yukina and again he found her in exactly the same place doing exactly the same thing.

He needed to see it with his own eyes, he decided, because it was just too absurd, and only confronting the situation would assure him of its validity.

The forest path was still overgrown and a tangled mess, and Hiei felt almost reassured as he walked along it. It had only been a few months since he had last been in the living world, it was impossible that it could have changed so much; and surely the changes he had already witnessed in Kurama and Yusuke – and by association, the changes in Shizuru, Shiori, Shuichi and Keiko – were enough. Surely nothing else could be drastically different. Surely what he had seen when he had looked for Yukina had been an illusion, possibly brought about from hunger or exposure to one of the more secretly intoxicating plants in Kurama's plant shop.

Near the end of the forest path, Hiei reached a part of it that had been cut back, in a manner that both made the path wide and clear and yet was still sympathetic to the trees and plants growing around about it. He stepped onto the newly cleared part of the path and stopped, looking about himself suspiciously before allowing his eyes to wander along the length of the rest of the path to its conclusion: the steps that led up to the old lady's temple. The steps themselves had not appeared to Hiei when he had sought out Yukina, but he was less than surprised to see that they too looked different. They were not immaculate and untouched as they had been in the paradise reality, but clearly they had been scrubbed clean of the graffiti that had once littered them, and some of the more major cracks and broken edges had been crudely repaired. And, at the top of the steps, the gate was once more complete, shining in the mid-afternoon sunlight with what was obviously a new and recently applied coat of paint.

Hiei moved onwards, walking up the steps for what was possibly the first time ever – because usually he either ran up them or else made his way up the hill by leaping between the trees. He was moving slower this time because he was distracted by the condition of the steps themselves and because a small part of him was quite apprehensive about confronting what he knew he was going to find at the other side of the temple gate.

And also the tree-house was just beyond the temple.

The air was filled only with the sounds of birds singing and the occasional wild animal scurrying around the forest floor or up a tree, the atmosphere strangely peaceful. There was no wind rustling the trees, which only made the relative quietness seem all the more relaxed and tranquil. It was a far cry from the noisy, crowded and hectic life in Mukuro's fortress in demon world, Hiei thought, but it was somehow less lonely. Hiei had often felt the most alone when he was in a crowd, but when he was actually alone, with nobody else around, he was less aware of his loneliness, and that was the feeling he was getting as he approached the temple gate. It was a nice, reassuring, feeling but he knew that it would be short-lived, and accordingly it started to fade as his head drew level with the top of the steps and he started to get line of sight of what lay beyond them.

The old lady's temple had been in a state of disrepair the last time he had laid eyes on it, and the only change that had been made to that during his time in the living world when Kuwabara and the others were building the tree-house had been that someone – he suspected Keiko or Shizuru – had removed the "condemned building" tape from around the broken down part of the building and cleared the rubble around Genkai's shrine and tided it as much as was possible without more materials and manpower available to perform the repairs required to bring it back up to standard. Now, however, the shrine was once more looking as immaculate as it had in the paradise reality, and the "condemned building" tape had not returned, mostly because there was no longer a real need for it: the temple was still run-down and in need of a lot of restoration work, but the walls had all been rebuilt and the roof had been mostly restored, with just one section still only made up of new wooden beams. The gardens had been cut back but looked quite bare and barren as many of the original plants had died. The paving around the ponds had been repaired and new slabs lain where they had been required, and the larger of the ponds had been filled with water and the bridge over it rebuilt. All traces of graffiti were gone and beyond the ponds, where there had – in every reality Hiei had visited – been an open stretch of grass, paths had been cut and a series of strange wooden objects had been assembled like some sort of display of crude human art: and it was just beyond those sculptures that Hiei found Yukina, kneeling by what looked like a patch of weeds, painstakingly snipping small parts from the plants before her.

Hiei moved over to the strange wooden objects and stopped again, clearing his throat awkwardly until Yukina looked back over her shoulder at him. As her eyes found him she immediately broke into a smile and scrambled to her feet, hurriedly dusting the dirt from her clothing and starting towards him.

"You came!" she said brightly. "I didn't think that you would come!"

"I finished my business," Hiei replied.

"Oh good!" Yukina said. "Look, we arranged to have the temple restored while we were away. What do you think?"

Hiei glanced over the temple again, before nodding.

"Obviously there is still much more work to be done to return it to its former glory," Yukina added. "But we're getting there. And look: Kazuma built a play-park too!"

Hiei twitched involuntarily at the word "play-park". Yukina held out her arms towards the strange wooden sculptures, and another look at them revealed that they were all low and formed into specific shapes with an apparent recreational purpose.

"Did you have a need for this… Assembly of playthings?" Hiei asked her.

"Yes," Yukina replied, looking almost disappointed that he had needed to ask.

"…What for?"

Hiei tried not to think about the answer he was expecting to receive: that Yukina had a child herself.

"For the children," she said, her face changing into what looked like an expression of strained tolerance. "Some of my friends from the ice village have visited us here already, and we wanted to make a place for their children to socialise and have fun."

"Their children?" Hiei asked.

He had to be sure.

"Yes," Yukina replied, nodding her head.

"Not your children?"

"I don't have any children."

"Good."

Yukina's face changed slightly and Hiei realised that he probably should not have said that last word out loud – it had been pretty tactless to do so, and that seemed all the more ironic when he thought about how cleverly tactful he had been earlier in Koenma's office.

He was still learning.

"You'll be staying for dinner?" Yukina asked him.

"I'm hungry now," he replied.

She faltered slightly and looked down at the watch on her wrist, her face twisting further when she saw the time it displayed.

"But it's four o'clock," she pointed out. "It's too early for dinner."

Hiei stared blankly back at her and she gradually started to nod her head, though she still looked a little confused.

"Come inside," she said. "I think I have leftover stew from lunch."

Hiei followed her into the temple, only pausing as he reached the entrance, unable to stop himself from turning his head and looking out into the forest at the tree-house: it was bathed in sunlight and as pretty as it always had been, but there was no sign of life around it.

Inside the temple the floors and walls had been fully repaired, but were clearly still in the process of being decorated, and the rooms themselves were still quite bare as only a few items of furniture had been put in the relevant places. Yukina led Hiei to the kitchen, which was perhaps the most like it had once been, and he gladly sat down and waited to be served by his sister.

"Hiei!" Kuwabara called to him from another room.

Hiei did not so much as blink, even when Kuwabara called on him twice more. Eventually, apparently sensing that he did not intend to move, Kuwabara came through to the kitchen to join him.

"Hey, what gives?" he asked as he sat down next to him.

Hiei glanced at him briefly, finding no more understanding from looking at him than he had from listening to his words, and so he remained silent and went back to watching Yukina preparing his meal.

"Kurama said you've been in demon world all this time," Kuwabara added. "So I guess it must be a surprise for you to see this place, huh?"

"Hn," Hiei muttered in a non-committed fashion.

"Shizuru and Keiko have been trying to get back some of the original stuff that was in this place," Kuwabara continued. "They've been going to auctions and stuff."

"And what have they found so far?" Hiei asked.

"Not much, but they got the karaoke machine back, so we can have a proper party tonight."

Hiei sighed.

"The karaoke machine?" he asked.

"Yeah, that was lucky, huh?" Kuwabara responded.

"What about the antique sword collection?" Hiei asked.

"No, they haven't found any of those yet."

"The Ming vases?"

"No."

"The Meiji period tapestries?"

"No."

"The jewellery?"

"No. But hey, you sure noticed a lot of the stuff around here!"

"Have you got back anything of any value at all?"

"The karaoke machine."

"Just the karaoke machine?"

"Um, yeah, pretty much."

Hiei glared at Kuwabara, trying to decide which irritated him more: the fact that he thought the karaoke machine was valuable or the fact that he could not understand how insignificant it was compared to the other treasures that had once filled the temple.

"You're an idiot," Hiei concluded.

Kuwabara smiled at the insult, which made Hiei start to lose his temper.

"I intended that as an insult," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's okay," Kuwabara said, putting a hand on Hiei's shoulder.

Hiei leaned away from him, glaring first at the point of the unwanted contact and then at Kuwabara himself.

"You call me names all the time Hiei, but I know the truth now," Kuwabara said quietly. "I know that you think I have a beautiful soul."

"I never fucking said that!" Hiei snapped, pushing his hand from his shoulder.

"Urameshi already told me," Kuwabara said, smirking slightly as he spoke. "He said you told him I have inner beauty."

"I meant that…" Hiei began. "I was talking about… Oh, whatever!"

Yukina placed down a bowl of hot stew in front of him then, but he could not help but notice how she pursed her lips and chewed at the inside of her cheeks to contain a smirk of amusement.

"I'm surrounded by inferior fools…" he grumbled, hunching his shoulders and pulling his bowl of food closer to his chest.

After eating as much as he could convince Yukina to serve to him, Hiei left the temple again without bothering to explain himself, because he did not wish to be followed. He went partway down the temple steps before stopping to confirm that neither Yukina nor Kuwabara was watching him or had followed him, and he then darted into the cover of the trees, taking the long route around to the tree-house. He approached the house as quietly as he could, slipping in the back door and creeping around the interior, silently amused and amazed at just how like the paradise version of the house it had become in his absence. He had expected to find it empty and he had merely been keeping quiet and hidden because he did not need Kuwabara finding him in there and thinking that he liked it – which he did, but he did not want Kuwabara to know how much he liked it – but almost as soon as he entered the house he could smell that flowery stuff Botan used in the bath, which told him that she had followed his suggestion that she should live there and was possibly there now.

He could not hear her anywhere in the house and after checking most of the rooms – including the main bedroom, the living room and even the outdoor portion of the house – he could not see her anywhere either. He kept quiet regardless and continued picking his way around the house, only stopping his snooping when he entered what had been Monzan's bedroom in the paradise reality, seeing three things there that made him momentarily forget to breathe in shock: first of all, there was a child's bed in the room and it looked quite similar (though not exactly so) to the one Monzan had slept in, secondly there was someone in the bed asleep and thirdly, the teddy bear Monzan had slept with was on the floor by the bed.

When he did start to breathe again, Hiei was left wondering if the sight before him was cute or simply ungainly: it was a child's bed, after all, and barely large enough to support Botan's head and body, her arms and legs spilling out of it and of her feet actually resting on the floor on either side. Even the couch in the living room would have given her more space to spread out over had she chosen to fall asleep there instead. It was actually quite ridiculous – what had made her think that falling asleep in a child's bed had been a good idea?

He started to leave the room again, with the intention of letting her sleep and going back to his first port of call upon arriving in the living world – Kurama – to try to make some sense of everything around him, but as he made to leave he noticed that the window beyond the bed was open slightly, and although there was no wind for it to be draughty, the air outside would get cooler shortly as the sun fell lower in the sky, and accordingly the room would become colder. And since Botan did not have the sense to fall asleep underneath any sort of bed-sheet, least of all one big enough to actually cover her, Hiei decided that he should probably shut the window to stop her becoming cold – he had always hated the cold personally, and told himself that was why he was doing it, just to stop the house becoming cold.

Even though it was warm and sunny outside and, by the appearance of the plants and trees, it was possibly early summer-time.

He carefully moved back into the room and leaned over the bed, arching his back to stop his mid-section from touching against either the bed or Botan as he reached out for the window. He kept stealing glances at her face to ensure that she stayed asleep as he quietly pulled the window shut and closed the handle into place. He straightened away from the bed after completing his task and stared down at her for a long time, silently wondering why she was still asleep. He was pretty sure that even a human ought to have noticed someone leaning over them in their sleep.

He cleared his throat loudly.

She did not so much as flinch.

She was breathing – he could see the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest to prove as much – so she was definitely only asleep, but despite him having leant over her, coughed on her and stared at her, she remained oblivious.

He had run out of ideas about how to wake her up, except for yelling or throwing something at her and he doubted she would appreciate him doing either of those things.

"I know you're there."

Hiei flinched, his eyes growing wide as a smile started to appear on Botan's face.

"It's a little hard to stay asleep with someone creeping around my house, leering at me and coughing on me," she said, stretching her arms out at her sides.

Apparently she had just been toying with him all along. Well that was… Stupid.

"I didn't mean to fall asleep," Botan continued, lazily opening her eyes at last. "I just sat down here because the sun was shining in through the window, and it was so warm I started to get – oh my, Hiei!"

She slapped her hands over her mouth and her eyes suddenly became huge. Hiei gave her a withering look, but when he saw that her chest was suddenly heaving and, as she removed them from her mouth again, her hands were shaking, he realised that she genuinely was shocked to see him standing there.

"I thought you were…" she said faintly. "The… Kuwabara…"

"Does Kuwabara regularly watch you sleep?" he asked her.

"No, but he does sometimes have to wake me up, and he's always too nervous to just wake me, so he usually tries coughing and banging things around and… You don't usually watch me sleep either… Do you?"

She looked genuinely curious as she asked her question, which helped stem Hiei's cynicism, as he had been about to admonish her for asking stupid questions.

"No," he said instead. "I've been very busy in demon world."

"Oh…" she said, nodding her head and sitting up.

She smoothed her hands over her hair, which had partially fallen out of its ties and become a little wild, trying to tame it with her actions before giving up and letting it fall loose about her shoulders. She moved around to sit on the edge of the bed and looked up at Hiei almost expectantly. He supposed that she was waiting for him to sit down at her side, but it was a small bed, and he was not really sure he wanted to sit so close to her right then.

"I wasn't sure if you were ever going to come back and see me–us."

Botan turned her head away for a moment and when she turned back her expression was quite neutral but Hiei could see the hint of colour in her cheeks, apparently the result of her saying something she had not meant to.

"I'm glad that you have, of course," she added. "I'm quite sure that everyone will be glad to see you."

"Are you glad to see me?" he asked.

"Of course," she said, keeping her face neutral.

"Of course," he repeated.

A short silence followed, during which both of them avoided looking at each other. And then, as childish as he knew it probably was to do so, Hiei pushed his scarf up to uncover the medal he had been concealing beneath it – not that he had particularly wanted to keep it hidden, more that he had not wanted to have to explain it to anyone just yet.

"Is-is that a medal?" Botan asked.

"Yes," he said, shrugging and pretending to look like he did not really care about it.

"That looks like an outstanding achievement medal from spirit world!" she gasped.

"Yes, it is," Hiei replied.

"Where did you get that from?"

Hiei froze, glaring at Botan incredulously. She actually looked like she needed him to answer her question: was it not obvious where it had come from?

"It came from spirit world," he said sarcastically. "Where else would it have come from?"

"Whose is it?"

Hiei growled.

"Mine!" he snapped irritably.

"Well now it is, but who did you steal it from?"

Hiei refused to answer that, as the wound it had caused his pride was actually physically painful.

"It's a trinket from your collection, yes?" she asked. "From your days as a bandit? Or did you steal more recently?"

"I was awarded it," he said in a low voice, tugging it from his coat. "Here, look for yourself."

He threw it at her and turned his back on her while she studied it, taking several deep breaths to try to calm himself: was that really all she thought of him after all this time? Did she really think that he could only ever acquire something so prestigious through petty theft?

"I had no idea that you'd been awarded this Hiei, I am sorry," she said after a short pause. "Koenma hasn't spoken to me since the SDF arrested me for assisting you in your quest, and I don't feel comfortable making contact with anyone in spirit world. Nobody here in the living world has been in contact with anyone from spirit world or demon world until today when Yukina went to visit you and her friends. I had no way of knowing that you'd been awarded this, and honestly, knowing what Koenma thought of you laterally, I never thought you would be given something like this by spirit world. I thought you were just wearing it as some sort of joke."

"I don't make jokes," Hiei pointed out. "I don't even like them."

"Really?"

"Absolutely!"

"Okay. Well I'm sorry I misjudged you. This really is an honour… Does this mean that Koenma and you…?"

"We have come to an agreement to be civil allies."

"Oh…"

Hiei heard Botan stand up behind him, and for a moment she hesitated there before touching a hand to his shoulder. He turned his head to look back at her and she smiled awkwardly, holding up his medal in her other hand. He turned fully towards her and she leaned forwards, reattaching it to the point it had been hanging from on his coat. She then fluffed his scarf over it again, spending longer than seemed necessary arranging the scarf about his neck afterwards.

"Those um…" she began, her fingers still primping the folds of his scarf. "Very nice things that you said to me in the cave…"

For the briefest moment, Hiei pictured himself scarred in a cave with Botan nursing him back to health after them both having tangled with the rock monster. Ever since his first visit to paradise, that had been the image he associated with the idea of him and Botan in a cave together, and it had become especially vivid after he had visited the reality where he had still borne the scars of that conflict. But he quickly came to his senses and remembered that the Botan in front of him now had never been in a cave with him following their encounter with the rock monster because he had run off and left her to fend for herself in this reality – which was something he found increasingly painful to recall. She was, of course, referring to what he had said to her during their showdown with the Special Defence Force just before he had returned to demon world to end the war.

"I was just wondering…" she continued. "If you still… If you ever… I mean, what I'm trying to say it… This is a lovely scarf, it's very soft."

She finished fiddling with his scarf and retracted her hands, forcing a smile.

"Where did you get it?" she asked.

"The scarf?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow at her in the hope that this was another joke of hers.

"Yes, it's lovely," she said.

He narrowed his eyes at her and she lowered her eyes to the ground for a few seconds before meeting his eyes again, her face solemn.

"What you said in the cave was very… Intense," she said quietly. "Your words were… Those of someone with a beautiful soul, and they… Sounded like…"

Hiei started to feel a little better at hearing her describe him as she had done in that other reality: as having a "beautiful soul".

"They sounded like words of love," she said, her voice almost a whisper. "Words of… Love…"

He nodded his head in acknowledgement of her words and for a moment he thought she might cry as her brow flickered with a frown and her eyes watered slightly, but the moment passed and she again forced a smile.

"Were you speaking out of love, Hiei?" she asked.

"Maybe," he said.

Her face straightened.

"Maybe?" she repeated.

"Perhaps," he said.

She sighed and started to look a little annoyed, but a flash of something passed over her eyes and she started to smile – this time in a devious sort of way that made Hiei nervous.

"So what inspired you to say those things?" she asked, her voice suddenly back to full strength and volume. "My labia or your lust?"

"What?" Hiei echoed.

Botan giggled into her hands but Hiei failed to find anything funny about what she had just said – damn Kuwabara and his stupid "Hiei dictionary"!

"Oh Hiei, it was funny!" she said.

"No it wasn't," he replied.

"Yes it was! Yusuke told me all about what happened in demon world, and how your definition of love was broadcast all over the world…"

Hiei felt his shoulders droop: if Botan believed that was his opinion of love, she would never take him seriously if he ever tried to tell her that he loved her.

"It made me laugh," she said. "Especially when Yusuke said it, because he does a really good impersonation of you, with the voice and the eyes, and the way you turn your head away when you say "hn", and–"

"So this is Yusuke's fault?" Hiei interrupted her. "I suppose that makes more sense…"

"Don't be mad Hiei," Botan said. "I was just joking. I thought it was quite funny that you said that was what you thought about the word love, because back then, that was actually how you felt."

Hiei perked up a little at hearing her use the words "back then", which implied that she at least understood that it was no longer how he felt about love.

"Sometimes your grumpy ways used to make me giggle," she added. "You were probably being perfectly serious, but that actually made it funnier…"

"Hn, I'm glad that I can amuse you," he drawled.

"Yes, just like that!" she said. "That's funny when you do that!"

Hiei started to scowl at her but when she just laughed he gave up bothering with his anger and let himself smile.

"Kuwabara really did once have a Hiei dictionary, you know," she said. "Some of it was just puerile, but other parts were fun."

"It's very disrespectful and distasteful," Hiei pointed out.

"But also funny."

Hiei smiled again in spite of himself.

"Maybe it would have been funny if it hadn't been broadcast to all of demon world," he reluctantly admitted.

"Look on the bright side: you've given young men all over demon world a new catchphrase," Botan offered.

She smiled and again, despite finding the whole situation ridiculous and more than a little insulting, Hiei smiled and even let himself laugh a little.

"That's a frightening thought, isn't it?" she said.

He nodded.

"Well, not that's it's not lovely to see you, but I have to get ready for dinner tonight – I wanted to take a bath first…"

Hiei took a moment to realise that Botan was trying to dismiss him from the house, his instinctive reaction being that he wanted to get into the bath with her and let her wash his hair again and then they could both be late for dinner after the bath led to other activities that involved them both being naked and wet, but when she started to nod at the door and her eyes lacked that loving look they had in that other reality he reluctantly realised that he would have to leave.

"Right," he said.

"You're coming to dinner with us though, yes?" she said.

"Yes," he said.

"I'll see you there then."

He nodded and walked on then, making his way through the house to the front door, stopping by the top of the rope ladder to look back over his shoulder. Botan had followed him there and was standing in the open doorway, her hair and clothing still a little dishevelled after her nap, yet still not detracting any from how beautiful she was – had she always looked that good, Hiei wondered, or had he grown to see her that way because of the things she had done for him and the way she had made him feel?

"Hiei?" she said, stepping out onto the walkway at his side.

"Hn?" he asked, turning slightly to better look at her.

She leaned towards him and for one blissful moment he was sure that she was going to kiss him – so sure that he pouted his lips and started to close his eyes expectantly, but instead she patted him on the shoulder and nodded a goodbye, turning on her heels and leaving him alone on the walkway, still poised and waiting for her lips to reach his.

"Fuck," he grumbled before jumping into a nearby tree.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** After a little pep talk from an old friend, Hiei returns to Botan again and the predictably obvious happens, only this time he gets it right first time. **Chapter 52 – Re-defining Love**


	52. Re-defining Love

**Recap:** Hiei saw the last of the snowball effect of his "good decisions" and had an awkward and unproductive reunion with Botan.

* * *

 **Chapter 52: Re-defining Love**

"Give me something pretty and smelly!"

Maya flinched and yelped as Hiei slapped a hand onto the counter in front of her. Kurama did not so much as blink.

"Um…" Maya began nervously. "Wh-what exactly are you after?"

"I told you already: I need something pretty and smelly!" Hiei repeated. "And in a nice colour!"

He turned to Kurama and narrowed his eyes slightly.

"Is colour important?" he asked.

"Perhaps you should be more specific," Kurama advised. "Or perhaps you could try starting this conversation again, and this time maybe you could start it from the beginning, as opposed to playing part of it out in your head and then yelling the remainder at us as though you expect us to understand."

Hiei growled in frustration.

"I need flowers!" he said.

"Ah, now we're getting somewhere!" Kurama said to Maya with an almost insolent smile.

"Just give me some damn flowers and stop acting like Shuichi!" Hiei demanded.

"What sort of flowers do you require?" Kurama asked, turning back to him.

"I already told you: pretty, smelly flowers. With colour."

Kurama's smile slowly faded.

"You really don't have a clue about this at all, do you?" he asked.

"Just give me some flowers," Hiei replied.

"What's the occasion?" Kurama asked. "Or is it something for your garden that you require?"

"…Stop taking the piss out of me."

"I think you might be a little past the flowers and chocolates stage, Hiei."

"…I don't understand. I thought flowers were what you gave to a human woman you're trying to woo?"

Maya snorted into one hand but quickly covered her amusement when Hiei cast her a warning glare.

"Would you excuse us for just a moment?" Kurama said gently to Maya.

She nodded and Kurama stepped out from behind the counter, beckoning Hiei to follow him through to the back of the shop. Hiei assumed that he was being taken somewhere significant and that Kurama intended to give him something useful like some flowers that women liked – but sadly he was wrong on both counts.

"Hiei, I'm going to give you some advice," Kurama began, stopping in the small break room at the back of the shop.

"I'd rather you just gave me some flowers and kept your opinions to yourself," Hiei warned him.

"I'm going to say this Hiei, because it needs to be said – but don't worry, I'll say it in a way that you will understand and appreciate," Kurama replied, ignoring Hiei's threat entirely.

"You make me sound simplistic," Hiei growled.

"You are simplistic Hiei, in everything you do apart from when it comes to matters of the heart, so here goes: you don't need flowers or any silly gimmicks or trickery. Just go and see Botan, and tell her what's on your mind."

"…I'm not sure I should tell her exactly what's on my mind."

Kurama tilted his head slightly.

"Obviously within reason," he said.

"You said to say what was on my mind," Hiei pointed out. "And now you're contradicting yourself!"

"Hiei, the other versions of yourself in the other realities were all still you," Kurama said slowly. "And the one who did marry Botan knew what to say to her, and since he was you, and you are him, you should know what to say too. Just go and see her. You'll know what to say when you see her."

"I did go and see her."

"…And?"

"She laughed at me and told me I have a nice scarf."

Kurama became so still and silent, Hiei wondered if time itself had frozen somehow. Eventually he moved again, leaving the room briskly and shortly returning again with a bunch of flowers.

"Tree peonies," he said, pushing the flowers against Hiei's chest. "That's the meaning of her name. It's a conversation starter."

Hiei caught the flowers in one hand, glaring at Kurama sceptically.

"Hiei, I know that you fear sharing your heart with anyone because, deep down, you're scared of being rejected," Kurama said.

"You don't–"

"No Hiei, let me finish. You loved your mother and she rejected you, you loved the ringleader of the bandits who raised you and he rejected you, but this is different. You've already done the hardest part, and frankly, after telling everyone else that you love Botan, don't you think that maybe she will be the one feeling rejected now if you don't go to her and renew your intentions?"

"…Renew my intentions?"

"Just get on with it."

Hiei grumbled a few complaints under his breath but turned and walked back through to the main shop-floor, intending to attempt to do what Kurama had advised. Maya probably said something to him as he went but he ignored her, only awakening from his thoughts again when he almost walked into Yusuke, who was on his way into the shop.

"Hey little guy, don't you look cute with your little bunch of flowers?"

Hiei ducked out of range as Yusuke tried to ruffle his hair.

"Going to see Botan?" he asked.

"That's none of your damn business!" Hiei moodily replied.

"Well it's about time!" Yusuke said. "Go get her, Romeo!"

Hiei froze as Yusuke slapped him almost a little too enthusiastically on the backside, but by the time he had recovered from the shock of the blow and turned to retaliate, Yusuke had already disappeared into Kurama's shop. Deciding to seek vengeance later, Hiei tightened his grip on the flowers and started his race across the city again, pausing only to sneak into a shop and steal himself another red sweater before continuing on to the old lady's temple, where he discarded his coat and shirt by the edge of the trees and donned the sweater and then leapt back up to the tree-house. As always, he walked brazenly into the house and began searching for Botan, only remembering where she was when the smell of that flowery stuff she used in the bath become overwhelming and he heard her humming to herself and splashing about in the bathroom.

He supposed that he should have left and waited until after dinner that night to talk to her, maybe even taking the opportunity at dinner to soften her up with alcohol, but Hiei had never really been a patient soul, and when he decided that he wanted something, he rarely bothered to wait to get his hands on it.

"Botan!" he yelled.

The house fell silent. Hiei approached the bathroom door.

"Botan?" he called through the door.

"Hiei?" she replied. "Wh-what are you still doing here? I-I thought you… I thought you left!"

"I did," he said. "But now I've come back. Get out here, I have to tell you something."

"I'm… I'm in the bath, Hiei."

"I know. Get out here. I have to say something, and I won't say it to a door!"

"Um… Can it wait?"

"No!"

"Okay…"

Hiei paced about outside the bathroom impatiently like a caged cougar as Botan got out of the bath and spent longer than seemed necessary preparing herself to leave the room. When she eventually opened the door separating them, she was wrapped in a long, fluffy white bathrobe and she had a big white towel wound around her head, containing her hair. She stepped out through a cloud of steam and for a moment, dressed in white and obscured in the steam, she almost looked ethereal and more like an illusion than a human woman.

"Is everything alright?" she asked, looking worried. "I assume this is an emergency?"

"Yes it is," Hiei said; because in his eyes, it was an emergency. "These are for you."

He held out his hand with the flowers and she blinked down at them blankly.

"You… Came in here and got me out of the bath to give me flowers?" she asked as she accepted them from him.

"And more," he said.

"More?"

"Yes."

Hiei looked about himself, his mind filled with the memory of Botan in paradise telling him that he had managed to convince her to marry him when they had been standing in the forest on the point that the tree-house was later built on. Obviously, as the house had already been built, he could not quite recreate that moment, but he had an idea of how he could get close to it.

"Come this way," he said, starting towards the living room.

Botan obediently followed after him, laying the flowers down on the dining table as they passed it. He led her out to the open part of the house, where there had been a sandbox and a rocking horse in the paradise reality, but both were absent now. He stopped in the centre of the floor and turned to Botan, who stopped before him expectantly, one hand clutching her robe by the collar and the other hand clutching it by her thighs as though she was afraid a sudden gust of wind might strip the garment from her body.

"…I love you," he said. "I didn't always feel that way, it didn't happen suddenly, but now I can't really remember what I thought or felt before I knew that I loved you, and I don't want to live in a world where I can't love you."

"Well, that's very sweet of you," she replied. "The things you said to me before you left for demon world were lovely, I kept them in my heart and they made me smile to recall them… I just wish that you had come back sooner. You always did disappear a lot, and you were always the last to join a mission and the first to leave it. I don't know that my heart could cope with your inconsistency… You're a good man, Hiei. You've done a lot of good things for us and I admire your principles."

Hiei tried to remember where he had heard that last part of her speech before, and he thought perhaps it had been in the reality where he had never had his scars healed after saving Botan and he had, during his visit there, gone to spirit world to find out why she had not married him – but that reality and his feelings and thoughts then almost seemed like a whole lifetime away from where he was now.

"I just… I just don't know what to think about you, I'm so confused," Botan added. "You are a good man though, Hiei."

"And you're a good woman, Botan," Hiei replied. "In fact, you're one of God's better people, and you don't know it, and that's just a part of why you're so special."

Botan started to look a little confused and Hiei wondered if he had said something wrong – he had been speaking from the heart, but speaking frankly had so often gotten him into trouble that he began to think it had just done so yet again.

"Oh my goodness!" she said quietly. "That's the first time that's ever happened to me! How strange!"

"…What?" Hiei grunted, growing confused himself.

"Did you feel that too?" she asked him.

"Feel what?" he asked.

"That feeling, that strange, out-of-place sensation…" she said. "It was déjà vu! When you said that last bit, I could almost hear your words before you spoke them! This must have happened to me in another life! Gee, I wonder what sort of life that was…"

Hiei knew what sort of life it was: paradise! If Botan was experiencing déjà vu, that was probably a sign that what he had said to her was something that other Hiei had said to her in the paradise reality when he had managed to win her over – and by that logic, all he needed to do was to continue that speech, and Botan would become as besotted with him in his own reality as she had been in that other reality.

It was a great plan, but unfortunately, Hiei had run out of inspiration, and he knew that blurting out any old nonsense would probably just make him sound stupid or insensitive. Or both. And so he tried to say something that might be sensible and sensitive.

"That definition of love I gave the others many years ago," Hiei began. "That may have been a true reflection of how I felt back then, but–"

"Oh, don't worry about that, Hiei!" Botan interrupted him. "I was only joking before, I know you don't still think that love is that word that… I know that your definition of love has changed."

"It has and it hasn't," he said.

He could tell by the look on her face that she was no longer experiencing any sense of déjà vu, but that strange force that had driven him to deliver his speech in Gandara was at work again, and so he decided to continue in the direction he had already started going in.

"I still mostly despise the word "love"," he said. "I understand the need to use it, but frankly, I don't like it."

"Oh," Botan said, looking disappointed. "I see…"

"What does the word "love" actually mean?" he asked. "When people say that word, what do they mean? Because I think they just say it out of laziness. There are too many things in it for just one word. It's: I care about you, I worry about you, I need you, I miss you. You make me feel good about myself. You make me laugh. You make me laugh at myself. Feeling for you makes me realise… That I feel. I come out of myself, I become like you… I become. Just looking at you makes sense. Just being with you makes me realise why we're here – it highlights the true purpose and direction of my life to me. It's about caring for somebody more than you care for yourself. You lose yourself. You might be frightened but you trust and you risk. You risk everything that you've fought to gain, you give all that away. And you forgive… Stupid mistakes people might make sometimes…"

"Oh Hiei… I…"

Botan seemed to be struggling for words, and deciding to capitalise on her current state, Hiei moved towards her, closing the distance between them and taking her into his arms. She tried to mutter out a few more disjointed phrases before eventually putting her arms around him, a sensation that once more made that tension in his shoulders ease – the tension he never seemed to be aware of until he got close to Botan and he felt it fading away. He chanced touching his lips to her neck in a light kiss, and although she did not verbally protest, he could tell by the way she flinched that she was still unsure.

"You are always on my mind," he whispered to her. "You are the basis of my dreams, and a life without you would be one long nightmare. I've come to realise that I cannot function without you."

"I-I never knew that you had such a beautiful soul, Hiei, the words you say are so…" she replied breathily. "So wonderful…"

Hiei smiled into her shoulder and moved his hands to the ties of her bathrobe, gently easing them loose. At first she did not seem to notice what he was doing, but then she gasped and released her hold of him to grab at the robe, keeping it in place around her.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

Hiei kept his hands gripped around the ties, determined that he could talk her into what he wanted from her.

"I won't be without you," he said softly. "I can't, and I won't. Now that I have loved so purely and deeply, I can't ever go back to being alone, and I would be alone, because no-one else could ever replace you in my heart. You've been everything that I've needed you to be, and now I need you to be mine."

Botan made a soft whimper and Hiei felt her hold on her robe lessen. He chanced kissing her neck again, this time prolonging the contact a little more, smiling against her skin as he felt her release her robe altogether and move her hands to his shoulders. She gradually walked her hands around his back to hold him once more and he carefully and gently untied her bathrobe and slipped his hands inside it, sighing heavily as he felt the bare skin of her stomach and sides against his palms. She gasped at the contact and grabbed at the material of his sweater, pulling it tight over his shoulders, and for a moment he thought that she was going to resist him again.

"Hiei, when you say such beautiful things, I…" she said, her voice trailing off as her breathing began to become heavier.

She sounded like she wanted to protest what was happening, but as he moved his hands around to the small of her back and nuzzled into her shoulder, Hiei could feel that her body did not necessarily agree with her mind, as she was moulding herself into his every touch almost on instinct.

"You make me fall for you," she eventually continued. "And it would be very cruel to do that to me if you don't intend to catch me."

"I could say the same to you," he replied.

She started to tell him that he was missing her point, but her voice failed her as he pressed his fingers of one hand into the small of her back and pushed upwards, letting his fingers follow the slight indent of her spine, the movement making her gasp and shiver and fail to notice that her bathrobe was being forced further open. She once more came to her senses when Hiei moved his other hand up to push the bathrobe down over her shoulder, unbalancing the entire garment and causing it to slip from her other shoulder and threaten to fall off of her body entirely. She yelped and tried to recover it, managing to keep it from falling but unable to pull it back up and forgetting to even bother trying when Hiei took advantage of her moment of distraction and grabbed a handful of the towel around her head, pulling her mouth to his.

To his surprise, she did not resist his kiss, and actually returned it almost as eagerly as he gave it. He could not really remember the last time they had passionately kissed, and he wondered if, somehow, he had forgotten how good it made him feel, how sweet she tasted and how perfectly harmonious their movements were when they were sharing an intimate moment. It was quickly making him hunger for more, but he was only too aware that the Botan he was holding now was not quite at the same level the Botan in the paradise reality had been – this was not the Botan who tied him to her bed and confidently took advantage of him, this was the Botan who was still unsure of herself and unaccustomed to physical loving, and she had only become what she had in that other reality because, as she had said herself, he had been gentle and patient with her.

Hiei carefully – and more than a little reluctantly – ended their kiss, taking Botan's face in his hands and holding her in front of him so that he could look her in the eyes.

"I can't guarantee that I can stay at your side all the time during the next 10 years," he said solemnly. "I have obligations in demon world that I have to attend to, and I can't neglect them – but not because they are more important than you, rather because I need to make a home there that will be as comfortable for you as the one here is. I can promise you that I will spend as much of my time with you as I possibly can and I absolutely promise to be at your side during the important moments in our future. You don't know what your loving does to me, but if you give me time, I can show you."

"Hiei…"

"Marry me. Your way, the human way, the demon way – I don't care."

"Hiei, I have grown very fond of you lately, but…"

"I don't mind if you say no. I was mostly expecting you to. But you should know that I won't give up. If you reject me now, I'll be back to ask you again."

Botan smiled nervously.

"Is that a promise or a threat?" she asked.

"Both," he replied, smiling a little himself.

She laughed nervously, her eyes lowering from his for a moment.

"I like your sweater," she said.

"I know you do," he replied.

She gave him a questioning look but he ignored it as another idea occurred to him – and it almost made him question his own sanity when he considered where it had come from. It was something else that other Hiei had not done and it was something Hiei had never considered doing, but for some reason it now seemed like a good idea to him.

"Let me try again now," he said, sliding his hands from her face and moving them to his own neck.

Botan tilted her head slightly, watching with curious interest as he lifted his hiruiseki pendant from around his neck. He held it out in front of his own face, taking a moment to look at the stone, his mind briefly recapping the lengths he had gone to to recover it, how much it meant to him and how it made him feel to hold it close and look into its glimmering depths.

"This stone is very important to me," he said, his eyes still on it as he spoke. "I never knew my mother, and this was – and still is – the only piece of proof that she ever existed and that she cared. This is the tear she shed when she gave birth to me, the symbol of the pain and the pleasure she felt upon my arrival in this life. The single tear an ice maiden cries at the birth of her child is always of superior quality to tears she cries over any other matter, and as such they are invaluable in both the material and the sentimental sense."

"It is lovely," Botan agreed.

"Yes it is," Hiei said, lifting his eyes to hers.

Keeping his eyes on hers he slowly lowered himself down onto his knees and then reached up a hand to take a hold of her left, turning it over in the air between them.

"This stone is the most important and precious thing I own," he said, holding up the hiruiseki with his free hand. "And I want you to have it."

He pressed it into the palm of her hand and folded her fingers over it, encasing her fist in both of his hands.

"Even if you never decide to be with me, I want you to keep it," he added. "Because everywhere I go, I carry you in my heart, and this way, everywhere you go, you can carry a little piece of me too."

Botan looked down at her hand and shook her head, the towel wrapped around her hair coming loose and gradually falling down her back.

"Yes," Hiei said, assuming that she was trying to refuse his offer of accepting the stone.

"I don't know what to… Say…" she said faintly.

"Just say you'll be mine," he replied.

She let out a small noise that almost sounded like a sob and her eyes watered over. Hiei felt a strange instinct demanding that he get up and take her into his arms until she stopped crying, and it took a surprising amount of strength to fight against it – which he did because he was determined not to move from his position until Botan had agreed to be his wife. She touched her free hand to both of his, which were still holding her left hand closed over his hirui stone, her finger quivering but the feeling of them against his skin once more magnifying his need for her.

"I…" she said faintly. "Wa… I…"

She tried to force herself to talk but eventually gave up and simply nodded her head – which was all the answer Hiei needed from her, and he promptly got to his feet again, tugging her bathrobe from her body and pulling her to him. She moaned slightly in what might have been complaint at his abruptness but he ignored it and she did not verbally protest nor try to stop him when he began trailing his hands over her still damp skin, rather she once more pressed herself against him and her hands began clawing at his sweater, her fingers soon finding their way under it. He backed up from her long enough to pull the sweater off over his head before lunging at her again, his lips crashing against hers in an almost clumsy kiss.

Hiei began frantically tugging at his belts, keeping his mouth on Botan's the whole time. As though sensing his need to maintain the contact, she took his face in her hands and held it in place as he awkwardly stumbled out of the remainder of his clothing. Once he had freed himself of his garments he gladly put his arms around her again and began carefully pulling her down to the floor. He was trying to remind himself that this was not the same Botan he had known in that other reality, and that he needed to be "exquisite, gentle and careful" for this, her first time, and, although he did want to let go of himself completely, he was almost glad that this was going to be something careful, slow, gentle and loving. And this time it was truly real: this Botan wanted to be with him because he was the one who had said and done the right things, not some other Hiei with some strange ideas, and this Botan was not going to be taken away from him by inter-reality travel or some sick twist of fate.

"Hiei?"

Hiei looked down at Botan, who he had finally managed to lie down onto the floor beneath him.

"Are you alright?" she asked, looking genuinely worried. "You-you stopped. Is everything alright?"

"No," he replied, allowing himself to smile and mean it. "Everything's perfect."

* * *

Hiei glanced at the window beyond the bed, noticing that the sky was growing dark outside. He was mildly surprised that none of the others had interrupted his peace demanding to know why neither he nor Botan had attended dinner that evening, but he supposed the either they had figured out what had happened and decided to leave them alone or they were waiting for them to make a late entrance. Hiei had not fallen asleep, but Botan had – again, he had thought, for the second time that day. He forgave her for it though, because he knew that she was exhausted after their earlier activities, and as he lowered his eyes to her, lying at his side sleeping soundly with a hint of a smile on her face, he could still see the faint glow of her skin from the sweat she had shed.

What they had shared had been tame and gentle and sweet and wonderful: but Hiei had been restraining himself massively throughout the entire process for fear of hurting her. He knew that would change, because in that other reality he had sometimes let himself go completely with her and she had kept up with him effortlessly, and although he looked forward to reaching a point where he could be like that with her again, he was also strangely pleased about the idea of taking his time to get there, of gradually opening her up to his touch and building her confidence. It was something he would never have known if he had been able to stay in that other reality, and he was glad that he had returned and would be able to experience it.

And although he had been very patient and tender, he could not really lie for much longer watching her sleep. He reached one hand over towards her, gently smoothing her hair away from her face. She made a small noise and her smile became slightly more pronounced, but otherwise she did not respond to his touch. He did not really want to disturb her, but at the same time, he wanted her awake because he was starting to grow hungry, and he hoped she would go to the temple with him – he could let her distract the others whilst he ate in peace.

He shuffled closer to her, moving a leg over hers and pushing his knee down between her thighs, his hands sliding under her body to lift her back slightly from the bed she sighed and her smile widened and he thought that she was probably actually awake and just pretending to still be asleep – she had quite a wicked sense of humour, apparently. He moved over her and nipped the sensitive skin between her neck and her shoulder, being sure to bite hard enough to leave a slight mark that was guaranteed to get her attention. As he lifted his head again he saw that she had opened her eyes at last and she was looking up at him, a hint of the lust she had gazed at him with in that other reality residing in her dilated pupils.

"Hiei," she said, putting her arms around him.

"I'm hungry," he told her.

A look of mild panic passed over her features but she quickly laughed it off.

"Oh I see!" she said. "You want to go to dinner with the others!"

"What else could I have meant?" he asked, pulling a face at her.

"Oh, um…"

She shook her head and looked away from him, but as he noticed the flush of colour rising to her cheeks Hiei started to understand what she had been thinking.

"That was your initial reaction to what I said?" he asked.

"No," she said faintly. "It was just because… We… And, you know…"

"For a former ferry girl, you've got a filthy mind, woman."

"Hey!"

"Hn, I understand why spirit world let you go now."

"That's not funny!"

Botan huffed and tried to wriggle out of Hiei's hold, though she did not bother putting much effort into it and shortly relaxed into his arms again.

"I chose to leave spirit world," she pointed out. "And… I don't know if I can ever go back now, not even to visit my friends. Koenma wasn't happy when I changed my mind about marrying him, he was quite angry when I went ahead with retiring from my ferry girl duties anyway and I doubt he'll ever forgive me for going to the ice village with you and lying to the SDF."

Hiei tried to stop himself from smiling, but he knew that he could stop the expression entirely.

"Koenma's a very benevolent leader," he said. "You might be surprised. You should go and visit him. I'm sure that he'll welcome you and that he'll be happy to see you again. You were always friends, weren't you?"

Botan nodded.

"I would like to tell him about my upcoming nuptials," she said, smiling to herself. "And it would be nice if he could… Maybe attend…"

"Go ahead and invite him," Hiei replied.

"Really?" she asked.

"Sure," he said.

Hiei had not told Botan about his recent visit to spirit world – other than the part about him receiving the medal from King Enma – and, although he still had the contracts he had forced Koenma to stamp and agree to, he had not mentioned those to Botan either. He had initially thought about sharing the joke with her, but he had since decided that it would be better – more dignified somehow – to simply let her think that Koenma had come to accept her circumstances on his own volition.

"Let's just have a simple wedding, though," she said.

"Sounds good," Hiei agreed.

He leaned down and kissed her gently, enjoying a brief, peaceful moment of bliss before becoming aware of the sound of voices outside.

"What is that?" he asked, lifting his head a little to look Botan in the eye.

"It sounds like…" she started, her brow furrowing.

"Oh fuck…" Hiei grumbled as the voices became louder and clearer.

"Are they singing?" Botan asked.

Hiei did not bother answering her, mostly because there was no point in doing so, as it was pretty obvious already that the voices outside the house were singing at an obnoxious level, obviously with the intention of being heard inside the house. He cursed again and got out of bed, marching over to the window, and opening it. He leaned his head and shoulders out to peer down at the forest floor below, where, illuminated by the lanterns around the house and the remains of the daylight from the dusky sky, he could only too clearly see Yusuke, Kurama and Kuwabara standing beneath his window, looking up at him.

"Get out of here!" he yelled down at them.

"You've been up there a long time, tiny!" Yusuke called up to him.

"Is Botan still alive up there?" Kuwabara asked.

"Never mind about that!" Hiei snapped.

He turned to Kurama and narrowed his eyes.

"Aren't you too sensible to be a part of this madness?" he asked.

"I just came to deliver this to you," Kurama replied, holding up what looked like a parcel of food. "Yukina was worried that you and Botan might be hungry. I did intend to come alone, but…"

He purposefully looked at Yusuke and Kuwabara in turn before looking up at Hiei again and shrugging.

"I tried to tell Yukina that you had plenty to eat up there," Yusuke said to Hiei.

"Hey!" Kuwabara protested. "Don't say things like that in front of Yukina!"

"Don't say things like that in front of me unless you want to die!" Hiei warned.

"You have been up there a really long time, Hiei," Kuwabara pointed out.

"Yeah, and we're trying to have a party over here," Yusuke added. "Get your dragon back under control and get down here."

Hiei turned from the window and walked across the bedroom to where he had discarded his pants. He mechanically picked them up and began pulling them back on.

"What are you doing?" Botan asked, gathering the bed-sheets to her chest and sitting up. "Where are you going?"

"Don't move," Hiei answered her, fastening just one belt around his waist and then picking up his sword. "This won't take long."

"Hiei!" Botan cried as he marched off.

He quickly made his way outside and hopped down through the nearby trees, intend on beating some sense into Yusuke and Kuwabara, but by the time he had reached the ground they had run off laughing, and only Kurama remained, still holding the food parcel.

"You should go away too," Hiei warned him, snatching the parcel from his hands.

"Don't worry, I intend to," Kurama assured him. "And I'll make sure they turn up the volume on the karaoke machine to drown out all the moaning and screaming from up here."

"Hn, it's not my fault the walls of that house aren't soundproofed," Hiei said smugly.

"No, but perhaps you could try making less noise," Kurama said, smirking slightly. "It's not really becoming of a man of your status to be so vocal in the bedroom…"

Hiei's face dropped and his sword lifted: and Kurama turned around and started slowly walking back to the temple.

"Cheeky bastard," Hiei muttered, starting back up to the tree-house.

When he got back to the bedroom he found Botan as he had left her, still sitting on the bed watching the doorway expectantly.

"Dinner?" he asked, indicating the food parcel in his hand.

She shook her head, pushing aside the bed-sheets and rising from the bed. Hiei almost dropped the food parcel at the sight of her fully naked, her hair loose, his precious hirui stone hanging around her neck, walking towards him with what was an almost seductive look in her eyes.

"I'm not hungry enough yet," she said, taking the parcel from him and setting it down on the vanity table. "I think I need to work up an appetite first…"

Hiei started to ask her if she was sure that she wanted to do what she was implying, as he did not want to rush her into anything, but as she kissed him and set to work removing his pants again he gave up protesting, instead stepping out of his clothes, dropping his sword and letting her take his hands and guide him back to her bed – to their bed – where he let her dictate the pace and intensity of their movements.

And as he once more slid into her, every part of their bodies pressed together in blissful union, he smiled, the thought that he would be able to enjoy that pleasure many time more over the remainder of his life giving him an unwavering sense of happiness and satisfaction.

* * *

 **Next Chapter:** The inevitable end-story, post-Botan's-human-trial epilogue. **Chapter 53 – Utopia**

 **A/N: Thanks for reading – either way.**


	53. Utopia

**A/N:** Cheesiest. End. Story. Ever.

Breaking format, chapter told partly from Hiei's POV and then the remainder from Botan's POV.

 **Recap:** The tides of fate totally reversed, and everything in the "norm" reality had become the same as (or better then) things in the "paradise" reality had been, most especially Hiei got the girl! (Was there ever any doubt?)

* * *

 **Chapter 53: Utopia**

The yard outside of Mukuro's fortress was quite chaotic as Hiei approached it. There was an abundance of trainees in Mukuro's camp that day – though there had been an abundance of the cocky little bastards arriving there over the last two years, so it was hardly surprising that their number had become so many. They were too young and impetuous to make useful soldiers or border patrol guards, but they were all of significant strength that turning them away would have been a mistake. Strong, but stupid, Hiei thought as he passed two of the boys producing origami art of intimate body parts. They had no idea how to control or use their powers, and he supposed that the duty of teaching them would ultimately befall him. He had made something of an art of avoiding the task so far, but as more and more of the little pests arrived, it became harder and harder to find a decent excuse to evade them.

Hiei did not really mind the influx of young fire demons into Mukuro's ranks – at first it had made him quite nauseous to think that the ice maidens of the ice village must have all gone on some sort of breeding frenzy during the first year of their liberation – but the children training with Mukuro's soldiers had been something he had learned to tolerate. Or rather, he had tolerated it for the first of the two years it had been happening. The second year had not been quite so straightforward, because at the start of the second year, Botan's time as a human had come to an end, and she had become a spirit and moved to demon world with Hiei.

Which meant that their own children had moved to a lawless place filled with their own kind.

In the living world, having children in the tree-house had rarely bothered Hiei, as they had mostly been well-behaved and sensible, but since moving to demon world, they had rebelled slightly from spending so much time around children like themselves, becoming competitive and almost overbearing in their bid to be better than their newfound rivals.

But, he supposed, that was just another part of his life. He had always lived his life in stages, working towards a goal, achieving it and then searching for another to begin the process all over, and after achieving his goal of returning to demon world with his wife and children, he supposed that his next goal was going to be playing facilitator to all the young recruits in Mukuro's army – who possibly out-numbered the veterans, he thought with a small frown.

But, despite his apprehension about the massing fire demons, Hiei was quite glad to be back. He had spent the last few days with Yusuke and Kurama, and although that had been a nice break, Hiei had come to miss his family during that time. He had once found that strange, that when he was separated from them he missed them, but he now understood, accepted and even embraced the feeling. He loved his wife and children, he was proud of them and he was not ashamed of wanting to be with them. He knew that they were not currently in Mukuro's territory, but they would be soon, and he was looking forward to being reunited with them. Unlike the alternate version of himself he had once known, Hiei had made a conscious effort from the beginning of his relationship with Botan to stay at her side as much as possible, including through the births of their children, and he had even learned to tolerate dealing with irrational babies for the sake of living up to his role as their father. And although it had all been strange and sometimes very difficult for him, Hiei still lived a life without regret, because he knew that it had been the right thing to do.

One of the best things about his new life was the reminder he felt every day that what Botan had told him in another reality was true – their love never faded with time, in any sense, and no matter how much time they spent together and what awkward situations they had come through, nothing ever took away that sense of ease and empowerment Hiei felt when he was near Botan. Prior to his experiences in other realities, Hiei had never cared for love and he had certainly never been looking for it, and yet, some eleven years later, he wondered how he had ever survived without it. Whilst he still cared for his own personal development, Hiei no longer thought of things that he would do in his future, rather he thought of things that they would do together in their future – and even that was not the pathetically sentimental weakness he had once thought such an approach to life would be, because, thanks to Botan, he now understood that real love was not the silly thing humans had it seem to be, but rather it was a partnership between two people, intellectually, spiritually and physically, that became stronger and more secure for ever trial it overcame. And no part of that had ever faded. He still felt himself relax every time he looked into Botan's eyes, the tenderness of her touches and kisses still made him feel loved and alive, she could still strengthen or weaken him with just one word or gesture and he was still pleased that she was the mother of his children.

Thinking about children – and it was hard not to, being surrounded by them – Hiei had always been amazed that the first child he and Botan had was Monzan. It seemed odd that the child had turned out to look and act exactly the same as he had in the paradise reality, because he had not been born at the same time or even in the same stage of Hiei's marriage to Botan. But nevertheless, Hiei's eldest child was Monzan, the same stubborn, determined, cake-loving, sword-wielding, jaganshi little fire demon. He had initially grown to be the same, slightly overweight and oddly proportioned child he had been in that other reality, but in the past year – since the family had moved to demon world – he had taken a strange and sudden growth spurt that had left him standing as high as Hiei's shoulder – not including his hair, the tip of which came to Hiei's jagan eye in height – and his weight had spread out over his body a little better, making him no longer appear so "chunky".

But Monzan had not been Hiei's last surprise when it came to family, as his second child came out exactly the same as he had seemed to be in the paradise reality – though Hiei could not be sure if he looked the same, since Botan had never birthed their second child during his time in that other reality. And Botan had remained true to her word and let Hiei name their second son – and he had chosen Ryu. Ryu was, unlike his older brother, quite scrawny and he was not nearly as physically strong as Monzan, though he did have a very powerful third eye, and it was clearly the focus of his strength. His hair was as spiked and slanted upwards as his brother's and his father's, but it lacked the white star and was the exact same shade of blue as his mother's. His eyes were as deeply red as Hiei's and although he was not very physically gifted, he was, like his father and siblings, very fast.

Hiei would never know if that other Hiei from that other reality ever fulfilled Botan's secondary wish when it came to children, but Hiei himself had through their third and final child, their daughter Sayori – Botan had chosen her name. Sayori had been the only of Hiei's children to be born without a jagan eye, but her powers centred around her fire abilities, and, as she had grown up playing with the many fire demon children who had visited Yukina at the temple, she had learned plenty of powerful tricks at a young age to compensate for her lack of other abilities. Her hair was as black as Hiei's but in the same style as Botan's – it grew downward with a slight kink at the ends – and she had her mother's pure pink eyes. And, though neither Hiei nor Botan believed in favouritism, they both knew that their daughter was Mukuro's favourite of their three children, purely because she was a strong woman and a potential future ruler of her kingdom.

Hiei's children were all different, but one thing they did all have in common was their competitiveness and their strange habit of stealing things. Hiei had never been a thief in their lifetimes, but they seemed to have almost inherited that trait from him as though it was a part of his DNA in much the same way that his demonic powers were. And they had a nasty habit of banding together and scheming raids on people they disliked.

Hiei smiled to himself at the thought of his family: they were not without their faults, but strangely it was their faults that often endeared him to them the most. He was proud of his children and he was proud of himself for having been there for them in the way his own father should have been there for him. But most of all, he was proud of Botan for holding them all together as the perfect mother and the perfect wife. She truly was the lynchpin of their family unit, and everyday she did something that reminded Hiei why he had fought so hard to make her his wife. For a long time, he had considered the fact that he had not rescued her from the rock monster to be a mistake and a regret in his life, but, over time, he had come to accept it as a necessary mistake that made him realise and truly appreciate how precious Botan was to him – if she had come to him easily, he probably would have left her on her own all the time like that other Hiei had. As it was, Hiei and Botan were mostly inseparable.

The last few days had been one of the few exceptions to that though. Hiei had been away from home, and he had heard, through the power of telepathy, that Botan was in the living world and would not be waiting for him when he got home. Hiei did not mind her leaving their home to go and visit her friends, but he did miss her when she went, and he most especially disliked arriving home to find his house empty – which was something he still felt odd admitting to. Sometimes his home was noisy and hectic – usually when the kids managed to steal something sugary or else got their hands on something caffeinated – and although Hiei disliked the manic moments, he had grown to prefer them to the quiet, lonely times.

As he arrived at his front door, Hiei wondered what Botan was doing and if she would be home soon – but he resisted the urge to literally check on her with his jagan eye: he was sure that she would be back as reliably as ever soon enough.

* * *

Botan hummed cheerfully to herself as she helped Yukina package up some small cakes into food parcels, only pausing in her actions when she noticed how large the package Yukina had made was.

"Um, Yukina?" she said, eyeing the bundle nervously. "That's a lot of cakes, sweetie."

"I packed some extra for your new friends," Yukina replied, continuing with her task.

Botan laughed nervously.

"My new friends, yes…" she said slowly. "It's very cute that you think they'll make it that far…"

Yukina stopped abruptly, her hands halfway through tying a bow into the ribbon holding the parcel together, her large red eyes moving to Botan curiously.

"Even I can smell what's in that parcel, I don't stand a chance of sneaking it past the kids," Botan said gently.

Yukina looked down at the substantially smaller parcel Botan had made.

"But you have some cakes there for them, don't you?" she asked.

"Yes, but one of your lovely cakes is never enough for them and they're expert little thieves," Botan replied. "I can't hide anything from them, least of all a parcel containing enough sweet cakes to meet their sugar needs for the next three years…"

"Oh…" Yukina muttered. "Well I suppose I could take these to demon world myself tomorrow."

"That's probably a better idea," Botan advised her.

"Where are the kids today anyway?"

"Well, knowing that I was coming here to pick up cakes, I left them in spirit world."

Yukina choked on nothing, quickly trying to hide her reaction by putting a hand over her mouth.

"Spirit world?" she asked, looking up at Botan.

"Yes," Botan replied. "They like it there."

"But… You left them there alone?" Yukina asked, taking her hand from her mouth again.

"No, of course not!" Botan said. "I left them with Koenma."

"Lord Koenma is babysitting the kids?" Yukina asked in a voice almost flat and low enough to be her brother's.

"It's okay," Botan assured her. "They love Koenma and he just adores them!"

"But I thought you weren't ever going to leave them with Lord Koenma again… After what happened the last time that you did…"

"That was an accident! And besides, nobody got hurt!"

Yukina arched her eyebrows and Botan gulped nervously.

"Nobody got hurt!" she insisted. "Much…"

"Monzan stole the potion that separates a soul from a physical body," Yukina reminded her.

"He didn't steal it!" Botan said indignantly. "He didn't even know what it was! He was just playing with the bottle because it was a pretty colour!"

"…Didn't he make Lord Koenma and George drink it?" Yukina asked.

"No he did not! Koenma and George drank it themselves!"

"…I thought Monzan pinched Lord Koenma's nose to force him to open his mouth and then he poured the bottle down his throat."

"Yukina! Where did you get a ridiculous idea like that from?"

Botan sighed in annoyance, gathering up her parcel of cakes.

"Monzan slipped the potion into Koenma's tea," she said quietly. "He held George's nose and forced it down his throat."

Yukina gave her a withering look but Botan turned away to avoid having to see it.

"He wasn't to know what that potion actually did!" she said stubbornly.

"But after he gave it to Lord Koenma and George, he tried to implant two human souls – recently arrived in spirit world after dying – into their bodies."

"That was an accident!"

"…Okay…"

Botan waved a hand in the air and smiled sweetly.

"He's a good boy," she said. "He just sometimes gets himself into troublesome situations with his curiosity… And his thieving… But he's a good boy really."

Yukina nodded, but she looked less than convinced.

"Thank you for the cakes!" Botan said. "They'll definitely be enjoyed… If they're not swallowed whole before anyone can actually taste them…"

She slouched her shoulders slightly and grumbled a complaint about bad eating habits before breaking into a smile again.

"I'm off," she said. "If you're coming to demon world tomorrow, be sure to visit us!"

"Of course," Yukina said. "I'll be visiting Rui anyway, and since you all live in the same place… I'll see you tomorrow."

Botan nodded and headed out of the temple. It was a bright sunny day outside and she could not help but look back at the tree-house. She had moved out of it almost a year ago, though she still stayed there sometimes with her family. They used it as a holiday home, but Kuwabara had warned them that it would not last forever, because the trees would eventually grow over the supports – he had guessed that it might last another 10 years, but probably no more. Botan always felt sad when she thought about the house falling or breaking apart: it had been her home for 10 years, and she had so many happy memories of it. She would miss it, but she was quite settled and happy in her new home in demon world, and she doubted her children would even care when they stopped going to stay at the tree-house.

And thinking about her children, she started to walk faster.

Hiei had been at a meeting in Yusuke's territory for the last few days, allegedly to discuss reinstating some sort of regular tournaments to help the leaders of demon world find strong soldiers – but Botan suspected that Hiei, Yusuke and Kurama were actually just messing about together and using the "meeting" as an excuse to take a little holiday together. She did not mind, but it did mean that her children looked to her for entertainment as opposed to indulging in their favourite hobby of trying to catch their father off-guard and best him in a fight. She had not visited spirit world in some time – least of all with her children – and going there had seemed like a good idea that morning, as had leaving the children there when they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Botan had never witnessed her children misbehaving when under the supervision of anyone other than her or Hiei, but she knew that they probably did at least a little bit, especially around Koenma, who they often took advantage of. In the past they had stolen some important items from spirit world that Botan had not discovered until days later, they had played a few nearly disastrous pranks on Koenma himself and they often broke things there, but Koenma never complained or lost his temper with them, so Botan had to assume that he enjoyed their antics.

Koenma had always been surprisingly accepting of everything in her life, Botan thought to herself. They had always been good friends, but, after jilting him, lying to him and leaving him, Botan had thought that he would never forgive her. It always pleased her that he had and that he took such an interest in her family.

As she arrived in spirit world to retrieve her children, Botan was greeted by the usual chaos of ferry girls and ogres, most of whom barely noticed her in their rush, though some did nod a greeting to her or else call out in acknowledgement of her presence. She answered them all accordingly, continuing on to Koenma's office, which she entered without knocking – as she always had done – to find Koenma in his adult form leering over Monzan, who was barely half his height but doing a fairly impressive job of standing up to him.

"Is everything alright in here?" Botan asked.

"No," Koenma said, folding his arms and turning to her. "Something's gone missing."

Botan immediately turned to Monzan, who shrugged innocently. She narrowed her eyes at him threateningly but he continued to maintain his aura of innocence.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Isn't it obvious?" Koenma snapped, pointing at his mouth.

"Oh dear!" Botan gasped.

"Aren't you too old to still need that thing anyway?" Monzan muttered.

"This form is a disguise!" Koenma pointed out.

"Even in your other form, you're still too old to need a pacifier," Monzan replied. "I mean what are you, like a thousand years old?"

"You don't understand the importance of it," Koenma tightly answered.

Botan turned sharply at the sound of sniggering, finding her youngest son, Ryu, sat in Koenma's chair, his hands over his mouth. She arched her eyebrows at him expectantly and he quickly became solemn and shook his head.

"Did you see either of them take it?" Botan asked, turning back to Koenma.

"I never see it when they take things," Koenma pointed out. "They're experts at sneaking things from people!"

"Yes, I know," Botan agreed with a sigh. "Well, there's only one way to sort this: hold this for me."

Botan passed the parcel of cakes to Koenma and then turned to Monzan, lifting up his arms and proceeding to pat him down, checking for any concealed items about his person. He muttered complaints about her comprising his integrity with her actions but she ignored his protests until she was sure that he was not hiding anything.

"He's clean," she said, turning to Koenma.

"It was probably the other one," Koenma said, nodding at Ryu. "He could steal something from me from a thousand miles away with his telekinetic abilities."

Botan patted him on the arm sympathetically, but did not bother to tell him that her youngest son had already done that to him more time than she cared to recall, since she had always managed to sneak the items back into Koenma's office without his noticing – usually via Monzan.

"Stand up," she said to Ryu.

He climbed up onto Koenma's desk and Botan repeated the exercise of checking him for any concealed treasures, but all she found on him was a few marbles and a half-eaten candy he had put back into his pocket, where it had become a sticky mess of fluff.

"I think you must have misplaced it yourself," she concluded, turning to Koenma.

"I had it when they got here, and I don't have it now," he replied.

"Maybe George took it," Botan suggested. "Maybe he wanted to clean it or hide it from thieving little hands."

Monzan and Ryu both turned away as she glared at them, feigning their innocence.

"I have to go," she said, turning back to Koenma. "I hope you find it soon."

Ryu leapt from Koenma's desk and hurried to the door and Botan and Monzan started after him.

"Where's your sister?" Botan asked her oldest son.

"Oh, right…" he muttered, spinning around and moving back into the office.

Botan waited while he collected her youngest child – her daughter Sayori – from the corner of the room, where she had been sitting playing with a potted plant.

"What was she doing over there?" Botan asked Koenma.

"She thought it was a demon plant, she wanted to fight it," he flatly replied.

"Oh, alright," Botan said. "As long as she wasn't try to eat it."

"Right…"

"She's just at that age where she puts everything in her mouth. Surely you can understand that?"

Koenma smiled awkwardly, but Botan was sure that he knew better than anyone about the addiction of an oral fixation, and so she made her way out of the office, trying to keep Ryu in her sights as he hurried through the busy corridors ahead of her, and she trusted Monzan to keep a hold of Sayori's hand behind her.

"Thanks again, Koenma!" she called back over her shoulder, waving to her former boss.

He smiled a little falsely and waved back at her.

"Next time just let me babysit," Monzan moaned, falling into step at Botan's side.

"You're not old enough to look after yourself," Botan told him. "And you're especially not old enough to supervise your brother and your sister."

"Dad was running his own gang when he was my age," Monzan pointed out.

"No he wasn't," Botan lied. "That was just a story he told you."

"But Koenma's an idiot–"

"Monzan, he's the prince of spirit world!"

"So?"

Botan sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Just… Show some respect for your elders," she said.

"He's maybe older than me, but I'm more of a man," Monzan argued.

"That's very rude, Monzan!" Botan snapped.

"But it's true! He said that body is a disguise he wears, and I've seen what he really looks like. Without that disguise, he's smaller and less developed than the runt."

"Don't call your sister a runt. And… Koenma's pacifier stores his spirit energy in it, and by sucking on it, he adds a little bit of his energy to the reserve it contains every day, making it gradually more and more powerful. It can–"

"Mom, I'm not a little kid any more!"

"Wh-what?"

"Save the stories for the runt, I know he just sucks it because he's a big baby!"

Botan stopped walking to glare at her son, but he walked on obliviously, picking his sister up to help her through the portal to demon world – not that she needed the assistance, but, despite calling her names, Monzan was very protective of Sayori. Botan sighed and followed after them, joining them as Monzan set Sayori on the ground again.

"I want up!" she complained.

"Just walk, you lazy little runt!" he scolded her.

"Mommy, I want up!" she said, turning to Botan and tugging at her dress.

"Are you tired already, honey?" Botan asked her.

"I'm too heavy, I want up!" she moaned.

Sayori looked like she might cry, and so to save her ears the pain, Botan put out her arms and started to crouch down to pick her daughter up, starting in alarm and almost falling over when Monzan suddenly grabbed Sayori up and Ryu stepped in between them.

"I'll carry her," Monzan said. "I don't mind."

"I'll help," Ryu said.

Botan eyed them both suspiciously, their sudden interest in helping their sister in a moment of laziness a clear sign that mischief was afoot.

"No," she said slowly. "Put her down."

"I don't mind," Monzan insisted.

"Put her down," Botan said sternly.

"I can manage!"

"You put your sister down this instant, Monzan!"

Monzan slowly placed Sayori on the ground again and Botan bent down to pick her up, watching her sons as she did so, only moving her eyes from them when she heard a soft clanging sound at her feet. She looked down to see a gold-plated inkpad from Koenma's office on the ground, staring at it for some time before lifting her eyes to her sons. They were both trying to look confused, but Botan was not fooled. She took a breath to demand where they had hidden it and what else they had taken but stopped as a spirit world stamp fell out of Sayori's dress.

"Boys?" Botan said quietly. "Have you been stealing things from Koenma and hiding them on your sister?"

They both shook their heads. Botan turned back to Sayori, who she was still holding at arms' length, and she gently shook her in the air, cringing as several more items clattered to the ground.

"Maybe just a little bit," Monzan admitted.

"It wasn't my idea, mom," Ryu quickly said.

"Shut-up, clown!" Monzan snapped at him.

"You shut-up, ugly!" Ryu argued back.

"Stop it!" Botan snapped.

She sighed and put Sayori down again, searching through the items that had fallen out of her clothing, but not finding the one item Koenma had actually noticed missing.

"Pick this up," she said to her sons, standing up and pointing at the discarded items. "You can take it back to spirit world tomorrow and apologise for taking it."

"Aw, do we have to?" Ryu moaned.

"Yes!" Botan replied.

As the boys picked up their spoils Botan took Sayori's hand and walked on, finding that her daughter was happy enough to walk now that she was free of the additional weight. They soon arrived back at Mukuro's headquarters, turning to one side of the yard and moving to the tower that had been built there specifically for Hiei and his family. As they reached their home, Botan was relieved to see Hiei's coat thrown over the banister of the stairs, a sure sign that he was back.

"Hiei!" she called out.

She waited for him to respond and when he did not she gave a small sigh before resorting to bribery.

"I brought cakes from Yukina!" she sang.

Hiei appeared at her side and she smiled, touching a hand to his cheek.

"I wasn't expecting you home today," she said.

Hiei leaned closer to her and lightly kissed her on the lips, bringing a contented smile to her face: she always told him how good he made her feel, but she often wondered if he would ever understand. She knew that he loved her – he had such beautiful ways of telling her just how much he did – and she wished that she could impress upon him just how amazing it was to her that, even after eleven years together, he could still make her shiver and go weak at the knees with just one look and that she still felt secure and loved with just one word from him.

"I missed you," he said gently. "I always do when you're not with me."

"Well they say that time apart makes the heart grow fonder," Botan said.

"And I say that time together makes me love you longer," he growled back.

Botan made to kiss him again but stopped as she heard Monzan and Ryu making retching noises behind her. She turned to glare at them and they quickly hid their actions behind a mask of false innocence.

"What's this?" Hiei asked, pulling the gold-plated inkpad from Monzan's pocket.

"Something we'll be taking back to spirit world tomorrow," Botan answered.

"It wasn't my idea," Ryu said.

"Shut-up!" Monzan snapped at him.

"Both of you stop!" Botan warned them. "You see this?" she said, taking the inkpad from Hiei. "This is why Koenma accused you of stealing his pacifier! If you keep behaving like criminals, he'll keep treating you like criminals!"

"Sorry mom," Monzan said, trying to look cute.

"It wasn't my idea mom, he made me do it," Ryu said.

Monzan and Ryu glared at each other angrily, and by the faint blue glow at their foreheads, Botan had to assume that they were fighting telepathically – which, for her at least, was possibly the most annoying thing that they both did.

"Never mind, let's have some cakes, shall we?" she said, holding up the parcel.

"Yes," Hiei said, taking it from her.

He headed off to the dining room with the parcel and Botan followed after him, both stopping by the dining table. Botan turned in preparation of trying to control three half-demon children all trying to get their hands on the cakes at once, but, to her utter shock, not one of her children had followed her. She leaned back, looking back through the doorway for any sign of them, but found none, seeing only Hiei's coat, still hanging on the banister, the hem rippling slightly as though a blast of air had just whipped past it. She turned back to Hiei to remark on how odd and sudden their disappearance was, but before she could make that observation, Hiei opened the parcel to reveal the box of cakes Botan had wrapped up, and Koenma's pacifier placed on top of it.

"What?" she gasped, leaning towards it.

Hiei slowly plucked it up between his thumb and forefinger, letting it hang in the air between them.

"That's impossible!" Botan said. "I gave the parcel to Koenma and he was holding it almost the whole time I was there! How can they possibly have…? Koenma said it was missing when I got there! He was accusing Monzan of stealing it when I arrived and he was probably right! But how the heck did they manage to…?"

Hiei looked thoughtful for a moment, but Botan noticed the faint hint of a smile on his face and the sparkle in his blood-red eyes.

"It's not funny Hiei," she said. "Not at all. That's more than just a pacifier, it's the container for all of Koenma's spirit energy. It's one of the most powerful items in spirit world. It has the power to… Hiei? Are you laughing?"

Hiei cleared his throat and shook his head, but Botan knew him well enough to know when he was containing a smirk of amusement. It was true that what the children had done was not funny – Koenma's pacifier was a very valuable, important and powerful item, and stealing it and bringing it to demon world had been a very irresponsible thing for them to do – but, despite knowing that the stolen treasure ought to be her main priority, Botan started to forget about it as she watched Hiei attempt to hide his amusement. It was still a novel concept for her to see him smile and more especially to hear him laugh.

"I'm going to make Monzan take that back and apologise," she said, trying to sound stern.

"Monzan didn't take it," Hiei answered her, his lips twitching as he found it harder to contain a smile.

"Ryu then," Botan replied.

Hiei shook his head and Botan's eyes doubled in size.

"Not my little girl!" she protested.

Hiei nodded, and gave into the smile that had been trying to tug at his mouth.

"But… She's so young and cute!" Botan moaned. "She's just a little girl in pig-tails!"

"A little girl in pig-tails who is an expert at deception, even without telekinetic or telepathic abilities," Hiei said.

Botan sighed, taking the pacifier from Hiei's fingers and holding it up in front of her face to study it. She was not looking forward to admitting to Koenma that one of her children had taken it after all, and she was especially dreading admitting to him that all three of her children were now active thieves.

"They grow up so fast," she said with a sigh. "My little girl's first robbery – who'd have thought she'd aim so high and be such a success on her first attempt."

Hiei snorted in amusement and Botan pretended to look annoyed.

"It's really not funny, Hiei!" she insisted.

He made an effort to look serious then too before answering her.

"It is funny," he said, taking the pacifier from her and placing it down by the box of cakes. "But what isn't funny is that the kids are gone, we have this place all to ourselves, and we're wasting time talking about a baby and his oral fixation."

He took Botan's hands in his and she could not help but smile with him as she felt a small rush of joy and desire at the contact: she wondered if he would ever know just how much she loved him, how wonderful his touch still made her feel and how grateful she was for that.

"Right," she said, stepping closer to him. "Silly me. Why are we talking about Koenma's oral fixation when we could be fulfilling your oral fixation?"

He grinned almost darkly at her words before moving his hands to her face and pulling her mouth to his. She closed her eyes and melted into his lips, sliding her hands around his back and pulling herself closer to him. She could have happily stood there for the rest of time simply enjoying the tender ministrations of his lips but he broke the contact after a minute or so and nodded towards the door, reminding her that it was not really wise to remain in the kitchen for what they were about to do. He took her hand and together they made their way to their chambers.

As they walked, Botan thought about her life with Hiei. The story of their love was not a traditional one and, in the beginning at least, it was not a romantic one either: but she knew that, even if she was given the choice to start over and do it all again, she would not change a single thing.

"I love you Hiei," she said as she sat down onto their bed.

"I love you Botan," he replied.

He leaned down and pushing his hands into her hair, easing it back to expose her throat to his lips.

"Do you ever wonder about fate?" she asked.

He placed a soft kiss on her neck before leaning back far enough to look her in the eye. He had a slightly sceptical look on his face and Botan giggled as she remembered why.

"Do you still hate the guardian of fate?" she asked him.

"No," he said softly. "She said "some things are just meant to be", and I agreed with that."

"You do?" she asked, unable to contain her surprise.

He nodded.

"It's meant to be forever you and me," he said.

Botan felt her heart flutter and, ignoring his grunt of surprise, she grabbed her arms around Hiei and pulled him down on top of her as she fell back on the bed.

He always knew just the right thing to say.

 **The End**


End file.
